Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

Word filtered through via one of the officers in the HOLMES incident room that a suspect was in custody. When he heard the news, Cooper was first amazed, then angry. His logical mind told him that his resentment was irrational, but he couldn’t stop it welling up into his chest and making him feel light-headed with anger.

As soon as he saw DI Hitchens enter his office, he burst in without the barest suggestion of a knock on the door. Hitchens swung round in astonishment and alarm.

‘Ben? What are you doing?’

‘Why didn’t I know about this arrest?’ said Cooper bluntly.

Even to his own ears, his voice sounded too loud, and too aggressive. He saw the DI’s face set into a rigid mask, and knew he’d already gone too far. But it was too late to step back now.

‘You’re not in charge of this inquiry,’ said Hitchens.

‘Even so – I should have known about this. I should have been told.’

‘The operation was on a need-to-know basis. You’ve seen what the interest from the press and public has been like? Well, the super is worried about leaks to the media. So a decision was made to limit the people involved. And that’s the end of the discussion.’

Cooper felt a flush rising at the suggestion that he might be responsible for leaks. Then he remembered his meeting with Erin Lynch, and realised he hadn’t told his DI about the letter. Perhaps it was best not to do it now.

But the surge of guilt only seemed to make him angry all over again. He was afraid he might not be responsible for anything he said in the next few minutes. So he took a couple of deep breaths before he spoke.

Hitchens raised a warning finger when he saw Cooper’s expression.

‘Don’t push this, Ben,’ he said.

Cooper shook his head. ‘Was this arrest a result of the forensic evidence?’

The DI’s face was still grim. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A DNA match from Hathersage.’

‘Hathersage? But not from Riddings.’

‘No.’

Cooper’s anger began to dissipate. Maybe he hadn’t been proved wrong behind his back after all. ‘So who…?’

‘We pulled in a gardener working for Adrian Summers,’ said Hitchens. ‘A Sheffield lad.’

‘I’ve seen Summers. Big shoulders, cropped blond hair.’

‘That’s him. He has a bit of a record. Nothing major, but some of his associates are interesting.’

‘Can we tie him to the assault on the Barrons?’

‘Not yet. Just the Hathersage job. But when we find him, we’re definitely going to ask him some tough questions. He’s got to be one of the Savages, though maybe not the leader.’

Cooper hadn’t always had good experiences with gardeners. He still winced whenever he remembered a case a few years ago when he was still a hopeful DC. In the village of Moorhay, that was. He’d managed to make a fool of himself, and jokes about compost heaps had followed him around the division for months afterwards. In fact, given half a chance, Gavin Murfin would bring the subject up even now.

He turned away to the door, and managed a brief, apologetic nod that he knew wouldn’t be enough for his DI.

‘But it’s never the gardener,’ said Cooper. ‘Never.’

It was no longer acceptable for the dead to be untidy. Civic orderliness, or health and safety considerations – whatever the reason, the headstones in the newest part of Edendale cemetery would never be permitted to lean, or grow mossy with age.

Sergeant Joe Cooper was buried in the new cemetery. He had no visible grave, only one of many headstones regimented into a neat row, with the grass around them mowed short and smooth. At the moment of his dying, when his blood had run on to the stone setts in Clappergate, he had left a stain that had taken weeks to remove. Sergeant Cooper’s killing had darkened the reputation of the town. But now they had done their best to tidy him away.

Every time Ben came here, the row of headstones had extended a little further, as if his father was slowly vanishing into the distance. Not far away, in a more recent row, stood his mother’s grave. Isabel Cooper might have expected to be buried in her village churchyard, like her parents, and her grandparents before them. But the churchyards were full. Now it was the new cemetery, or a trip to the crematorium. Those were the facts of death.

Normally the family came here in November, at the anniversary of their father’s death. And lately they had been coming in September too. Cooper supposed they would stop coming one day, at some distant time in the future. He couldn’t imagine when that would be, but it was bound to happen.

Today he had come for a different reason. This was something he could only do alone. He would never have an opportunity to sit down with his parents and tell them about his engagement. Well, that wasn’t quite true. They might never know now – but it didn’t stop him telling them.

Every year, when he came here with his brother, the conversation seemed to follow exactly the same pattern. Their exchange had become a ritual, as much as the laying of flowers.

Three years, and it doesn’t seem a day.

Matt’s words couldn’t help but sound trite. But Ben had never objected, just waited for the next part of the custom.

I still keep expecting him to appear. I think he’s going to come round the corner and tell me to stop idling around. It’s as if he’s just been on night shift for a while.

Ben had always known it would be impossible to escape his father’s shadow completely, unless he transferred from E Division. Sergeant Joe Cooper’s memory would always be there, in Edendale, imprinted on the walls of the police station. Literally, in some places. In the chief superintendent’s office at West Street, there was a large framed photograph of dozens of solemn men sitting or standing in long rows. They were the entire uniformed strength of Edendale section, pictured during a visit by some member of the royal family in the 1980s. On the second row, as a young sergeant, was his father. Downstairs, in the reception area, a memorial hung on the wall near the front counter – a plaque commemorating the death of Sergeant Joe Cooper, killed while on duty. Yes, he would always be there, cemented into the very fabric of E Division.

Eventually, in a few hundred years, Sergeant Joe Cooper’s name might be worn away from this headstone by the winter frosts and the rains lashing down the Eden Valley. But for now, the letters were still clear and precise, with sharply chiselled edges. Life might be brief and transient. But death was written in stone.

Ben shivered. It was that cold shudder again. Perhaps it was just a result of standing on this hillside surrounded by death, an effect of all these graves around him. But he felt an uneasy sensation that somewhere out there, a disaster was about to happen. No, not quite that. It had happened already.

He spent a few quiet minutes standing by his mother’s grave, thinking through everything that was happening in his life, hoping that she would understand. Then he walked back through the cemetery, reaching the exit just before the gates were closed for the night.

When he reached the car, he paused and looked back. He knew his father’s grave would no longer be discernible from here. It had long since merged into the anonymous rows of headstones, swallowed up among Edendale‘s dead.

In his flat at 8 Welbeck Street, Cooper had finally fallen asleep in his armchair in front of the TV, with his cat purring in the crook of his arm, well fed and content. When his phone rang, he jerked awake in panic, knocking the cat off the chair in a protesting heap.

‘Yes?’

‘Sarge, it’s Luke Irvine.’

‘Oh, Luke. What is it?’

‘Reports are starting to come in of another incident. I thought you’d want to know straight away.’