Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

For some reason, many of the house names in Riddings included the word ‘croft’. There was South Croft, Hill Croft, Nether Croft. It made them sound more like remote homesteads in the Scottish Highlands than homes in an affluent middle-class Derbyshire village.

Every few yards, steel posts were sunk into the verges to prevent cars parking on the grass. In one place, someone had exercised a bit of artistic interpretation and used giant imitation toadstools instead. All the mail boxes he’d passed seemed to be decorated with illustrations of post horns or stage coaches. He couldn’t imagine that little touch on the Devonshire Estate.

Throughout the village, rose hips hung over the road, and long banks of unpicked blackberries were ripening at the wayside. What a waste.

Just beyond a sign warning of horse riders, Cooper saw a gate with a cattle grid to keep the sheep out. There might have been sheep in Riddings once, but there wasn’t much sign of them now. Apart from horses, the nearest livestock would be the Highland cattle roaming the flats above Baslow Edge, so often photographed by tourists against a backdrop of the Eagle Stone or Wellington’s Monument.

Nearby, a woman in a pink sleeveless top was kneeling on the grass weeding a flower bed, watched by a West Highland terrier. In a small orchard, speckled hens pecked among windfall apples. Life seemed to be going on as normal in Riddings.

‘The Barrons have been here for three years,’ said Gavin Murfin, sweating his way to the meeting point and peering at the scum-covered water in the horse trough. ‘One of the neighbours told me that Valley View was on the market for nearly two and a half million. I guess prices have fallen a bit since then, though.’

‘Not in this village.’

‘Oh?’

‘So where did the Barrons get the money to move into Riddings, I wonder?’

‘I know what you mean. Not forty years old yet, and three kids to bring up. You’d think they’d be on the breadline like the rest of us poor saps who have families draining every penny from our pockets. But Jake Barron is in line to take over the family business. The Barrons have a chain of carpet warehouses across South Yorkshire – Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, all those places. His dad is still company chairman, but Jake is chief executive. I guess he’s taking a fair whack out of the company.’

‘Hasn’t the carpet trade suffered from the recession?’

‘No, the opposite. People have been spending their money on home improvements instead of moving house. New furniture, new carpets, that sort of thing. There’s no recession so bad that somebody doesn’t benefit from it. They say the pound stores are booming.’

Detective Constables Becky Hurst and Luke Irvine arrived together, and shared the results of their interviews with neighbours. No one had seen or heard anything, it seemed. As far as the residents of Riddings were concerned, the Barrons’ assailants had come and gone like ghosts.

‘Who has details of the Barrons’ children?’ asked Cooper.

Hurst held up a hand. ‘I can tell you that. There are three of them. Their names are, let’s see…’ She consulted a notebook. ‘Melissa, Joshua and-’

‘Fay,’ said Murfin. ‘Melissa, Joshua and Fay.’

He couldn’t resist a note of satire in his voice as he read out the names. His own kids were called Sean and Wendy.

‘But I don’t suppose they were in a position to see or hear anything. I bet none of them even went near a window to look outside.’

‘We need to keep knocking on doors, then,’ said Cooper.

Murfin wiped a hand across his brow and fumbled in his pockets for sustenance. ‘We need more manpower to do all this door-to-door.’

‘I’ve been promised there’s more coming.’

‘Some people have got out from under anyway,’ said Murfin grumpily.

‘Like who?’

‘Diane Fry, that’s who. The Wicked Witch of the West Midlands. Let’s face it, she’s just phoning it in these days. Secondment to a working group, I ask you. It should be me phoning it in. I’m the one who’s done his thirty. I’m the one who’s so close to retirement it’s practically singeing my arse. But look at me – still pounding the streets, knocking on doors. It’s cruelty to dumb animals.’

‘Gavin, I really don’t think you’d want to be on a working group. Implementing Strategic Change? Think about it.’

Murfin chewed his lip ruminatively. ‘Okay, I thought about it. And I fell asleep.’

Cooper thought of the Barrons’ house again. They were getting nothing from the neighbours, so the answers must lie at Valley View. Everything would depend on forensics from the scene, and he was missing out on that.

‘Better keep knocking on doors, Gavin.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Murfin looked at the main street that ran through the village.

‘I’m not walking up that hill, though. Someone will have to drive me to the top, and I’ll work my way down.’

It was true that Murfin had never been cut out for country treks. No matter how many memos were sent out by management about the fitness of officers, he had been unable to lose any weight. From time to time he’d compromised by taking his belt in a notch, which had only succeeded in producing an unsightly roll of spare flesh that hung over his waistband.

His wife Jean had been putting him on diets for years, but they never worked. Now he was so near to completing his thirty years’ service and earning a full pension that he didn’t really care any more, didn’t feel the necessity to meet the fitness requirements or respond to emails on the subject. It was odd, then, that the prospect of approaching retirement hadn’t made him more cheerful. Instead, he was becoming more and more lugubrious, like an overweight Eeyore or Marvin the Paranoid Android.

A woman came past walking a terrier. Surely the same woman Cooper had seen gardening only a short time earlier.

‘How’re you doing, duck?’ said Murfin with forced brightness.

The woman glared at him coldly.

‘What are you selling?’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, we don’t want any.’

Murfin sniggered as if she’d told a dirty joke and sidled up to her to show his warrant card.

‘Police,’ he said. ‘Oh, I know – I can’t believe it either. They take anybody these days. Can you spare a minute, duck?’

‘Okay,’ said Cooper. ‘While Gavin is out ingratiating himself with the locals, let’s get some real work done.’

‘Ten to one he’ll end up being offered a cup of tea,’ said Hurst, watching Murfin with a hint of admiration.

‘Fresh coffee,’ said Cooper. ‘But if I know Gavin, it’ll be the biscuits he’s interested in.’

A car pulled alongside, a metallic blue Jaguar XF with the number plate RSE1. The passenger window hummed down, and man leaned towards it from the driving seat. Iron-grey hair swept back, a sardonic eyebrow, a loud and commanding tone of voice.

‘Police?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Cooper.

‘You know what’s going on around here, I suppose?’

‘Yes. We’re aware of it.’

‘So what are you doing about it? Anything? Or nothing?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, but put his car back in gear and accelerated off down the hill.

‘Great.’

‘Nice to know we have the support of the public,’ said Hurst as she watched him drive away.

‘When people get upset and frightened, they need someone to blame.’

‘Surely they should be blaming the thugs responsible for the crimes?’

‘But no one knows who they are, do they? So we’re the nearest target. That’s the way it works, Becky.’

‘That’s so unfair.’

‘It happens.’ Cooper glanced at her. ‘You’re going to have to get used to our relationship with the law-abiding public.’