Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

‘Not in Riddings?’

‘No. Further away, on the other side of Edendale.’

‘Can it be connected to the other attacks in our inquiry?’ asked Cooper.

‘I don’t know at this stage. But everyone in the division is jumpy. The DI is on alert, maybe even the superintendent.’

‘Everyone knows it’s impossible to predict where and when the next attack will be.’

‘If that’s what it is.’

‘What do you mean? Is this an aggravated burglary, or not?’

‘There are no details yet, Ben. Just the 999 call so far. We’ll have to wait for the FOAs to report in. Sorry, that’s all I have.’

Cooper saw that he had another call waiting.

‘Got to go,’ he said. ‘Keep in touch if you get anything more definite, Luke.’ And he pressed the key to accept the new call.

At first there was only silence on the line. No, not silence – a series of strange, disturbing sounds thudding and yelping in the background. Noises he couldn’t identify, but which made his heart lurch and his throat constrict with fear.

‘Hello? Hello? Who is that?’

Finally a voice, barely distinguishable. It sounded muffled, oddly choked by distress and panic.

‘Ben? Ben, you’ve got to come to the farm.’

‘Kate? Is that Kate? I can barely hear you. What’s happened? Is it one of the girls?’

‘No, no. It’s Matt.’

There was a long pause on the line, with Kate quietly sobbing, and Cooper’s mind racing as all the possibilities went through his head. He was picturing an accident with a piece of farm machinery, his brother trapped and crushed under a toppled tractor, his leg caught and mangled in the blades of a combine harvester. His thoughts moved so rapidly that they’d flashed through all the scenarios and reached the scene in hospital, Matt on a trolley in A amp;E, being wheeled straight into theatre for emergency surgery to save a severed limb. He felt sick with the immediacy of the horror and pain and blood that he knew awaited him at Bridge End Farm.

Time must have stood still for a moment, because it all went round and round inside his head before Kate finally spoke again and dropped the bombshell that turned Cooper’s life over.

‘Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s Matt – he’s shot somebody.’

Sunday

The light of dawn came slowly to Bridge End Farm. The hills to the east hid the morning sun and kept the farm in shadow, even while the valley below it was already bathed in light. Ben Cooper shivered in the chill of the paddock behind the house. Within the next hour or so, the dew would begin to evaporate, forming a mist between the dry-stone walls, leaving him floating in space, half in sun and half lost in a haze.

He’d just finished helping Kate to pack up the car and drive away from the farm with the girls, still dazed and tearful with incomprehension. She was taking them to her sister’s, who lived over the hills near Holmfirth.

After a mad race from Edendale, Ben had arrived at Bridge End just as the ambulance departed. He had been in time to see Matt, too, handcuffed and being guided into the back of a police car. His brother had looked pale and dishevelled, unshaven and somehow smaller and older than he had ever appeared before.

In the darkness of the early hours, the lights of emergency vehicles filling the farmyard had turned the scene into a stage set. Bridge End had looked alien, an artificial setting for a TV melodrama. For the first time, the farmhouse he’d grown up in looked totally unfamiliar, a mere facade under flickering stage lights. At that time of night, the blinding flicker and glare had emphasised the depths of blackness beyond the farmyard, reinforcing the impression that all these people were simply actors. Somewhere out there in the darkness was the real world, where this kind of thing didn’t happen.

No wonder he found it impossible to believe the official account of the night’s events. Somebody must have made it all up. It was one more incredible story released on the world, with the inevitable tragic outcome.

It was only when Kate had told him the tale herself that he was forced to accept the truth. His sister-in-law was a real, living person, a victim dragged into the drama against her will.

‘It was about midnight,’ she’d said. ‘We were in bed, asleep. Well, I’m not sure Matt was asleep. He’s been sleeping very badly recently, you know?’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Anyway, he got up, without me noticing. I woke a few minute later, and realised he wasn’t there. I thought he’d just gone to the bathroom. But then I heard noises…’

‘Outside? Or in the house?’

‘No, outside in the yard. I knew there were people out there. And suddenly I was frightened. I jumped out of bed to go to the girls’ rooms, to see they were all right. But then…’

‘Then?’

‘I heard the shots.’

As he watched the sun come up over the hill, Ben realised finally how exhausted he was. His skin felt dry and gritty, as if he’d been wading through sand. His eyes burned, and a dull ache throbbed deep in his skull. The exhaustion wasn’t just physical, though. It was emotional, too.

Ben had always sensed the police service being blamed by members of his family for the death of his father. Now the police were taking the blame for the arrest of his brother. And he had become part of the police. As far as his family and their friends were concerned, he was the police.

The one thing he couldn’t do – couldn’t possibly do, in any circumstances – was let his brother get sent to prison. The prospect was unimaginable. He couldn’t be seen to stand by as that happened, let alone appear to be helping the process along. He would have to resign from the force before that happened. Yes, his job was important to him. But family came first.

Bridge End Farm inextricably tied the Cooper family together. It had played that role for generations. For Ben, these trees and slopes were as familiar as family photographs. Barns where he’d played as a child, fields where he’d lain in the sun through his school holidays.

But tonight, standing in the yard at Bridge End had been like finding himself marooned on an island while the whole world rushed around him on important business that he had no part in. For the first time he became aware of how the family could be ignored in situations like this. The SOCOs and uniformed officers were inclined to treat them as if they didn’t exist. They seemed embarrassed to be spoken to, even avoiding eye contact, as if they were visiting a leper colony.

Dealing with the family was the worst job in a murder case. Worse than handling a dead body, more difficult than seeing the blood or sifting through the mess for evidence. Raw emotions from living people were much harder to cope with. Everyone said it. He’d said it himself. He’d never realised that it might be so obvious to the family that no one wanted to have anything to do with them, and didn’t want the trouble of explaining what was going on to people who might be in an emotionally fragile state. From this point of view, it was much more convenient to pretend the family didn’t exist, to walk around them without acknowledging them and tell yourself it was a question of professional detachment. The danger of getting too involved. That was what officers shied away from. But how did you judge where the fine line lay between detachment and insensitivity?

‘They’re only doing their job, I suppose,’ Kate had said, as if reading his thoughts.

Ben could tell she was trying to rationalise her own feelings. She didn’t want to make a scene, but could feel herself right on the edge.

She had rested against his shoulder, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She looked terrible.