Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

Cooper swallowed, touched by her confidence.

‘You’ve got it, Carol. Any time you need it.’

‘Thank you, Ben.’

She paused, scanned the CID room as if something had caught her attention. But there was nothing to see, except Irvine.

‘So, Riddings,’ she said. ‘If your theory is correct…’

‘It’s not exactly a theory,’ said Cooper hastily. ‘Not a theory.’

‘A feeling, then. An instinct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s good. You should trust your instincts.’

‘Not everyone says that.’

She shrugged. ‘But if your feeling is right, the answer lies among the residents of the village themselves. A personal motive for the attack on the Barrons – and perhaps on the Hollands?’

‘I don’t know. That could have been different.’

‘Really? Well, we need a link, then. A definite connection. Somewhere there must be a name, or a combination of names, that explains everything.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

Cooper frowned. He ran his eye down the list of names he’d just written down. It included everyone who lived or worked in the neighbourhood of the Barrons and the Hollands in Curbar Lane. Not just residents, but the housekeeper at Riddings Lodge, the cleaners, the man who maintained the drives. But there was still something missing.

‘Luke,’ he called. ‘Did we get a list of employees from that gardening firm working Riddings?’

‘Yes, it’s here.’

Cooper scanned the list that Irvine gave him. Adrian Summers of AJS Gardening Services had listed half a dozen names, including two or three that sounded East European.

‘Is this all of them?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’m wondering where Dave is,’ said Cooper.

‘Dave who?’

Cooper looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Dave?’ echoed Villiers.

Cooper shrugged. ‘A gardener, I think.’

It suddenly dawned on Cooper that he hadn’t told Villiers about the letter he’d been given by Erin Byrne. She knew about the phone calls to the Eden Valley Times, but the letter had been lying on the back seat of his car, forgotten while they were visiting Riddings Show.

He ran back down to the car park to fetch it, feeling a mounting excitement that there might actually be a connection after all. On the face of it, the message seemed very trivial, even meaningless. But it must have some significance. Yes, it must.

‘Well, I know that symbol,’ said Villiers, putting her finger on the horizontal line with the arrow beneath it.

‘You do?’

‘It’s some kind of surveyor’s mark. The Ordnance Survey use it, and people like that. It’s meant to indicate a point where a specific measurement can be taken. I think it’s called a benchmark.’

‘A surveyor’s mark? That sounds educated. But the words themselves look as though they’ve been written by somebody illiterate.’

‘I know. It’s a puzzle. Sheffeild Rode? Which way is the Sheffield Road?’

‘Well, from Riddings, it’s over the edge,’ said Cooper thoughtfully. ‘Over the edge…’

‘What?’

‘That was originally the way to reach towns and cities to the east of the Peak District, for travellers and packhorse trains. Way back, before the turnpike roads were built.’

‘They went over Riddings Edge?’

‘Yes, over the edge, across the flats and on to Big Moor. Remember the packhorse way we used on Thursday night?’

‘Of course. But across that moor? It’s just a wasteland. No roads, no landmarks, no signposts, nothing but heather and bracken. How could that be the road to Sheffield?’

‘Believe it or not, there were half a dozen trackways and trade routes up there, all converging on a pre-Roman road. It was a major east-to-west route through the Middle Ages, right up to the end of the nineteenth century. And it’s not true to say there are no signposts.’

‘Really?’

Cooper was staring at the symbol that Villiers had said was a surveyor’s mark, and at the scrawled message Sheffeild Rode.

‘And you know what?’ he said. ‘I think I’ve actually seen something like this up there.’

‘On Riddings Edge?’

‘Not on the edge itself – but behind it, out on Big Moor.’

Diane Fry had found that interviews often became a game of cat and mouse between interviewer and interviewee, a test to see which of them could make the other lose his temper. When a suspect was provoked to anger, that was when he gave the most away. Unless his solicitor was able to rein him in.

Mick Brammer had decided to decline the advice of his legal representative. He didn’t know enough to appreciate the tactic of a repeated ‘no comment’. He thought the fault wasn’t his – so why shouldn’t he say so?

‘Ade signed me up for the job,’ he said. ‘It was just a one-off, that’s all. Cash in hand, and nothing more said about it. Fair enough, I thought. You can’t turn down a chance to make a few quid these days.’

Brammer was small and wiry, with quick, suspicious eyes and tattoos on the sides of his neck. Not the type Fry would have chosen if she was hiring a gardener. But for a burgling job? Yes, maybe.

‘Ade? This would be Adrian Summers of AJS Gardening Services?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Yes, mate. Easy pickings, he said. And it would have been, too.’

‘Until something went wrong?’

‘Yeah. Well… I think that was it.’

‘Are you sure? Did Adrian make a mistake? Or was it planned to end that way?’

‘I dunno. I didn’t expect it to go down the way it did. And I don’t think the other bloke did either.’

‘Who was this other bloke?’ asked Fry. ‘What was his name?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’

‘That seems a bit unlikely.’

‘No. You don’t understand. It’s best that way.’

Hitchens placed his hands on the table. ‘Who was the client?’

‘Look, mate, I don’t know anything about that. It’s no use you keeping on asking me.’

‘Where did the instructions come from?’

‘I can’t tell you, mate. All I know is it was Ade who took me on for that job.’

‘And what about the other jobs?’ asked Fry.

He shook his head. ‘I only did the one.’

Hitchens sighed. Quietly, so that the tapes in the interview room didn’t pick it up.

‘As you know, Mr Brammer, we have your DNA from the scene of the robbery at Hathersage last month. It was a match to a sample you gave when you were arrested for motoring offences in Sheffield twelve months ago.’

‘Can’t deny it,’ said Brammer. ‘DNA. So it was me, right? I was at the place in Hathersage. The banker bloke.’

‘Mr Johnson.’

‘Yeah. I was there to help take the stuff. I didn’t agree to anything else.’

‘Mr Johnson was injured in the attack.’

‘That wasn’t me. It was…’

They paused, waiting for a name. ‘… the other bloke.’

Hitchens managed to stifle another sigh. ‘Let’s move on, then. Let’s talk about the robbery at Valley View, in Riddings, on Tuesday night this week.’

But Brammer was shaking his head vigorously, looking at his solicitor now. ‘Not me. I wasn’t there. I only did the one, the Hathersage job. I don’t like the rough stuff. Too nasty, like. You can go down for a long time over that kind of business, can’t you? So I told Ade I didn’t want to know about any more jobs. It isn’t worth it, for any amount of money.’

Fry and Hitchens exchanged a glance, and Fry nodded. Unfortunately, their suspect sounded as though he was telling the truth.

‘Did Adrian Summers ask you to do any more jobs? In Riddings, particularly?’

‘No, mate. Like I said, I told him I didn’t want any more. So he never asked. I kept out of it. Good thing too. That was a bad business. Nasty stuff. It’s not worth it.’