Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

‘Right.’

Cooper thought about the neighbouring families in Riddings. They were all here in the village – all those nightmare neighbours that people talked about. The noisy ones who played loud music or left their dogs barking all day, the aggressively territorial ones who argued over boundaries, the obsessively nosy ones who watched every movement you made, the lazy or inconsiderate ones who brought down the value of your property. All human life was here, in its own way. The amount of money some of these individuals possessed made no difference, except on the surface. Underneath, they were still just animals, marking their territory and screaming at intruders.

Villiers was in full flow now. Cooper could see that she was trying to distract him, to occupy his full attention with her precise rundown of events in Riddings. And he had to admit that she was succeeding. For a few minutes, he’d forgotten what might be happening at Bridge End, or in an interview room at West Street. He fingered his phone in his pocket, then abandoned it again as she continued.

‘So,’ said Villiers, ‘whatever the reason he’s there, our Mr Gamble pulls his cowboy hat down over his ears and bravely goes up to the house to see if there’s anything wrong. He looks through the kitchen window…’

She paused, and frowned.

‘Yes?’ said Cooper.

‘Why didn’t he knock on the door?’

‘Good question. I’d say he didn’t want the Barrons to know he was there, wouldn’t you?’

‘Do you think there might have been bad blood between them and Mr Gamble too?’

‘Almost certainly. They must have been aware of him hanging around. And with the children in the house… well, parents get wary. Protective.’

Cooper swallowed. It was bound to happen that small things would remind him directly of his brother’s situation. There were obvious parallels between the attack on the Barrons and the incident at Bridge End last night. The difference was that in the first case the householders had become the victims of violence. Matt had not let that happen.

Villiers was watching him carefully. She didn’t miss much.

‘We’re thinking that if Mr Gamble had made a nuisance of himself previously, he might have been nervous of encountering Jake Barron. Yes, I see that. But when he looked through the window and saw Zoe’s body, he still didn’t knock on the door, did he?’

‘He told the officers who responded to his 999 call that he was frightened the attackers might still be on the premises,’ said Cooper.

‘Mmm. That’s reasonable, I suppose.’

‘Well, he couldn’t have known who’d attacked her. It might have been her husband, for all he knew.’

‘Perhaps.’

Cooper was interested to hear the doubt in her voice again.

‘And then there’s the call itself,’ she said.

‘He claimed he couldn’t get a mobile phone signal at Valley View. That’s quite feasible in this area. But I suppose it’s equally likely that he wanted to get away from the scene, for his own safety.’

‘Because the attackers might still have been around, yes. But it still seems a bit odd to me that he would run to Riddings Lodge.’

‘I guess he went there to use a landline to make the 999 call, as he said – or else he was seeking safety and ran to one of the nearest properties.’

‘Mmm. He would have run to Russell Edson for protection, you think?’

‘He wouldn’t be my choice,’ admitted Cooper. ‘But he must have known that Tyler Kaye wasn’t in residence. So it was a rock or a hard place. There was nowhere else to go.’

Villiers smiled. ‘You’re making a good job of justifying his actions.’

‘Just trying to put myself in his place.’

‘Very good. And who else was out and about that night, apart from Mr Gamble?’

‘The Chadwicks were up on Riddings Edge, watching for the Perseid meteor shower. The Hollands had been balsam bashing and called in at the Bridge Inn for a few drinks on the way back. The Edsons had been out for dinner at Bauers restaurant.’

‘But they were back home when the attack took place.’

‘Obviously.’

Villiers held up a finger. She had a bright, animated expression on her face, like a primary school teacher trying to enliven a class of sleepy children.

‘What else do we know about Tuesday?’ she said. ‘Around the time of the attack on the Barrons?’

‘A party of walkers saw someone in the phone box, a few yards from Valley View.’

‘That’s right.’ Villiers looked round. ‘Well, it’s a place to start.’

The phone box in the centre of the village was one of the old red ones designed by Gilbert Scott. As a result of a decline in their use, they were preserved in many areas for purely decorative purposes. Cooper crossed The Green to peer through the windows. Yes, totally empty. Stripped of its phone, coin box, information panel, everything. No one used public phone boxes any more. They were heritage.

‘Who would be standing in the phone box, then?’ said Villiers. ‘Not some visitor who thought there was going to be a phone in it. They’d be straight out again.’

‘Of course.’

‘Could someone have been sheltering? Was it raining?’

‘No, it was fine. It had been for days.’

‘But all the residents of Riddings must know there’s no phone in that box any more, so…’

‘Right. The only reason anyone would stand in the box pretending to make a call was to prevent the walkers from seeing his face. He didn’t want anyone to be able to describe him later on. If he hunched over as if he was making a call, all they would see would be his back.’

She shook her head. ‘That doesn’t mean it was someone local, though.’

‘I think it was. I think it was the person who was on the Barrons’ property that night. Someone who lives in Riddings.’

‘But why would he do that? The walkers would have had no idea who he was. Besides, if he lives here, he had every reason to be on the road.’

‘It might seem that way to someone else, from the outside. But when you’re feeling so conscious of what you’ve just done, you don’t want anyone to see your face. You imagine that your guilt will be written clearly in your expression. The desire is to get away and hide from the world.’

‘How do you know what goes on in someone’s mind in those circumstances?’

‘I’ve talked to people,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve asked them. Ordinary people, not those hardened to killing. The ones who didn’t expect it to happen, and weren’t prepared for it. It’s not difficult to understand, if you have enough imagination.’

‘So who, then?’

Cooper didn’t answer her question directly. He was thinking it through in his own mind.

‘I mentioned it to Mrs Gamble. She knew straight away that there was no phone in the box, but she didn’t say anything about it. Why?’

Villiers nodded. ‘Because she guessed who it might have been.’

‘Yes.’

‘Her husband, you mean.’

‘More than likely.’

‘What’s the strength on Gamble? Have we got a case?’

‘Not one the CPS will run with.’

Cooper ran his mind over the things he hadn’t done. There were so many, it would make a long list.

‘Did we ever get forensic results from Gamble’s clothes?’ he said.

‘Not that I know of.’

‘The report ought to have arrived by now.’

Villiers pulled out her phone. ‘I’ll call Gavin and get him to check.’

Cooper looked up at Riddings Edge. The hillside up to the edge looked almost impassable. It was too steep, and too scattered with huge lumps of rock, some of them half-worked millstones. A long strip of birch woodland clung to the upper slopes. Birch was a pioneer species – the first tree to colonise bare ground like the lower slopes below Riddings Edge.