Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

She hesitated, not sure what the best answer would be.

‘Well…’

‘Oh, I forgot,’ said Cooper. ‘You often don’t know where he is.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I expect that can be quite convenient sometimes.’

He could see Mrs Gamble trying to figure out what was safe for her to say. She must be wondering how long he’d been outside the house, watching. What were the chances that he had seen her husband through the window? If she lied, he would know. Not worth the risk.

‘He was here a moment ago. He’s probably gone to his shed.’

Cooper hadn’t realised the extent of the back gardens in Chapel Close. It wasn’t obvious, when the front doors of the houses opened almost on to the road. There was certainly room behind number four for a large wooden shed, though.

Gamble met them at the door of the shed, no doubt alerted by their footsteps, and his wife’s slamming of the kitchen door. Inside, Cooper glimpsed the usual gardening equipment – a lawn mower, forks and spades, a few hand tools hung on racks. A workbench ran along one wall, fitted with a vice, the wooden surface pitted and scarred.

Further back, in the darkest part of the shed, Cooper could see that there was another room partitioned off, a makeshift door firmly closed against prying eyes.

Gamble had been boiling a kettle when they arrived. A small cloud of steam trickled out of the door into the open air. A large white mug stood on a table with a tin of tea bags.

‘More questions?’ he said, settling his cowboy hat over his ears. He glanced at his wife, as if expecting her to go, but she showed no signs of leaving.

‘Just a few,’ said Cooper.

‘Go on, then.’

‘It’s about Tuesday night, of course. When you were at Valley View.’

‘Yes?’

‘After you heard the noise from the Barrons’ property, you mentioned seeing a light on in their kitchen.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did that strike you as odd, Mr Gamble?’

‘Odd? I…’

‘Because according to your initial statement, it was when you saw the light on in the kitchen that you decided to go and investigate.’

‘Well, there wasn’t usually…’

‘Yes?’

‘Er… yes, it struck me as odd.’

Gamble had developed a stubborn expression, his thick eyebrows bunched together.

‘Let’s be honest,’ said Cooper. ‘You’d watched the Barrons’ house at that time of night before. You knew what their habits were.’

‘I don’t know why I thought it was odd,’ he said sullenly. ‘I just heard the noise and saw the light, and I thought I ought to see what was going on. I was being neighbourly. Concerned.’

‘Concerned. Of course. And was that also why you ran to Riddings Lodge before you called the emergency services? You were concerned for Mr Edson’s welfare?’

‘Signal,’ blurted out Gamble.

‘What?’

‘I couldn’t get a signal on my mobile phone. You know what it’s like in these places.’

‘Ye-es.’

It was true that this landscape made it difficult to receive a signal from a mobile phone mast. That high wall of rock to the east would block any mast located on the Sheffield side of Riddings. There was an area up on the Snake Pass that for years had possessed neither mobile phone reception nor coverage for the police radio network. For a long time it was a spot where you would want to avoid having an accident or emergency. The only way to get assistance was to leave the scene. In that case, the national park authority had finally given planning permission for a radio antenna on an existing pole, with an equipment chamber underground to reduce the impact on the environment. It was perfectly possible that Mr Gamble had been obliged to leave the scene of the Barrons’ assault to make his call.

Gamble had noticed Villiers trying to edge closer to the doorway to see inside the shed, and he stepped smartly in her way.

‘What network are you with, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘O2. You can check.’

‘I know.’

It bothered Cooper that the answer about the mobile phone signal had come so quickly. It was as if Gamble had been expecting the question for days, and the reply had been bottled up inside him, under so much pressure that it burst out of its own accord when the button was pressed.

He couldn’t help the feeling that he should have asked this question before. Yet how could he, when he didn’t know Gamble had gone to Riddings Lodge until he got that information from Russell Edson?

‘Mr Gamble, why didn’t you tell the first police officers you spoke to that you went to Riddings Lodge before you made the emergency call?’

‘It didn’t seem, well… relevant.’

Cooper heaved a sigh. ‘Also, I need to ask you again whether you saw anyone else around Curbar Lane at that time? Please think carefully. This is very important.’

Gamble considered for a moment, glancing at his wife out of the corner of his eye, fingering the brim of his hat.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw the Chadwicks. You know, the people from over there, at Nether Croft.’

‘The Cottage,’ said Cooper.

‘That’s what they call it now. It was always Nether Croft to me. But I saw them, the Chadwicks. They were walking up The Hill, just as it was getting dark.’

‘They were going to watch the meteor shower,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh?’ He sniffed. ‘Aye, well, if they say so, I suppose.’

‘Anyone else?’

Gamble lowered his head and fixed Cooper with a keen gaze from under his eyebrows.

‘Yes, the Hollands. I don’t know where they had been until that time. You should ask them, I reckon.’

Gamble moved slightly, and Cooper noticed a digital camera on the table in his shed. Not a cheap pocket camera, but quite a decent SLR model.

‘Are you interested in photography, Mr Gamble?’ he asked.

‘Oh, just in an amateur way.’

Cooper wished he could get a look at what was on the camera. But he didn’t have any justification at the moment.

‘You’ll be around, sir, if we need you again?’

‘I’m always around,’ said Gamble.

As they left Chapel Close, Cooper’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Liz.

Hiya. forgot to ask u last nite, what did matt mean abt not marrying Sept or Nov?

He looked at the screen for a while, knew he couldn’t possibly explain it in a text message, and finally typed:

Will explain tonite.

It was funny, but he’d rather assumed that Liz had understood what his brother had meant, why nothing like a wedding could be planned for those months. Anniversaries had always been important in the Cooper family. Their mother had died in September, their father in November. The anniversaries of their deaths were always marked by a visit to their graves in Edendale cemetery. It was a tradition that neither he nor Matt would ever want to be the one to break.

The memory of his mother’s death was still too clear in his mind. He had been the only one there at her bedside in the hospital, after her fall. He remembered waiting outside among the trees, while Matt and their sister Claire sat with their mother, watching the fading light as the day came to an end. He’d spent the previous few days talking to people about the death of their loved ones, encountering all kinds of ways of dealing with death, and accepting it. He hadn’t been sure how he would react himself, what other people would expect of him. He became terrified that when the reality of dying came close enough to touch him personally, his mind would go into denial. How could he face the physical truth? The slow process that began with the final breath. Surely, when the moment came, it would be too much to cope with. He’d be frozen with fear, unable to express a thought or emotion in case it burst a barrier that held back the demons.