Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

‘Not really,’ said Cooper, shocked that she could even contemplate the idea.

‘Yes, really.’

He began to feel angry. ‘If both your parents had died, you wouldn’t even think of saying that.’

She looked at him then, a mixture of emotions passing across her face. He wondered which of them would win. But this was Diane Fry he was talking to.

‘I suppose I ought to apologise,’ she said.

‘Oh, don’t feel that you have to.’

‘We’re so different, you and me. I’ll never understand your world. And you, Ben, will never understand mine. I’m not going to apologise for that.’

‘That wasn’t… Oh, never mind.’

‘I am sorry about your parents, really. I imagine it must have been hard.’

‘Yes. But it’s only an effort of the imagination with you. You don’t really understand, do you?’

Fry was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t think I ever did,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing you’re right about.’

He searched for something else to say. But he saw Gavin Murfin watching them from across the room, and only one thing came to mind.

‘So were there any repercussions for you, Diane? I mean from your own, er… incident in Nottingham?’

‘I received words of advice.’

‘Lucky.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

Cooper watched Fry walk away. He hadn’t asked her whether she had been successful in obtaining a transfer, or finding another job. He knew she’d been looking for a few weeks now. If she did, though, he would be the last person she told.

Well, one thing was certain. When she did go, Fry would be remembered. Though maybe not for the right reasons. Murfin still talked about the battered chips he’d seen in the Black Country, when he was there with Fry on an inquiry. He’d been trying to persuade his local chippy to make them for him ever since. Luckily for his arteries, they’d refused so far.

Fry paused in the doorway, caught once more in the act of passing from one place to another. It was the way that Cooper would always imagine her.

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘who have you got in Interview Room One?’

‘It’s my Riddings suspect,’ said Cooper. ‘Name of Edson.’

In Interview Room One, Cooper sat down next to DI Hitchens and regarded the man across the table. He was accompanied by his solicitor, and he looked relaxed and confident.

Cooper recognised that look. It was in the eyes and mouth mostly. Without the make-up and the false beard, the similarity was obvious. His hair was dark, but swept back just like his father’s. It was the same sardonic eyebrow, the same supercilious curl to the lip.

For Cooper, the surprising thing was that he hadn’t recognised this man when he’d seen him with Adrian Summers last week. Thursday, that must have been, not long after he’d visited Riddings Lodge for the first time. He’d experienced a feeling of recognition, but it hadn’t clicked into place. It was a problem when you saw people out of context. In the end, it was only Gamble’s photograph that had made everything fall into place. But at least he’d found his missing Dave.

‘You are David Edson,’ said Hitchens, opening the interview with the tapes running. ‘The son of Mr Russell Edson, of Riddings Lodge?’

‘The same.’

‘We understand your father was a very wealthy man. A big lottery winner?’

‘He certainly was. And here I am, struggling to scrape a living.’

‘As a children’s entertainer,’ said Cooper, ‘if I’m not mistaken.’

The eyebrow lifted and the curl came to the mouth as David Edson smiled.

‘Oh, you saw me.’

‘Yes, of course. No one at Riddings Show could have missed you. The famous Doctor Woof.’

‘Well, that’s just a little hobby of mine. Not what I do to make a living.’

‘Especially when you don’t charge for your services, but volunteer to do it for nothing.’

‘True.’

‘I wonder what you have in your past, Mr Edson.’

‘I’m CRB checked, you know. I couldn’t work as a children’s entertainer if I wasn’t.’

‘Yes, we’re aware of that. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to discuss two murders. Those of Jake and Zoe Barron.’

As the interview went on, David Edson’s facade began to crumble. Cooper was glad to see it. His attitude was all show, after all. Just like his father’s.

In the end, Edson ignored his solicitor’s urgent advice, and blurted out the one thing that was most important for him to say.

‘I thought that killing them would make me feel better. But it didn’t.’

Carol Villiers was the first to congratulate Cooper. The rest of the CID team milled around in celebratory mood, their paperwork forgotten for a while.

‘You were right on that one, Carol,’ said Cooper. ‘What infuriated the Edsons most was seeing the Barrons still spending money when they were about to lose everything. But David was the most infuriated. He was filled with rage. He blamed Jake Barron for his father’s situation.’

‘That’s a bit like a jealous lover, too, when you think about it,’ said Villiers.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, instead of blaming his father, he blamed the object of his father’s obsession. He took the view that Barron was ruining his life, and his future prospects.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, Barron was draining off all the money that should have come his way. David had built all his expectations on that money.’

‘So it was David who hired Summers, knowing that the job would be blamed on the Savages.’

‘Yes. And there was never any intention to steal anything, just to grab a couple of things to make it look like a burglary. They went through a gap in the fence to get to and from Valley View, then up the track to dispose of the haul. They spent the night in Edson’s garage, then drove their van out next morning.’

‘Meanwhile, his father and grandmother calmly went off to have dinner at Bauers,’ said Villiers.

‘It must have been quite a shock for Russell to find Barry Gamble turning up on his doorstep that night. Gamble had figured it out. He wasn’t stupid. He knew all about people. And why wouldn’t he, when he spent so much of his time watching them?’

‘He’d been spying on the Edsons, then.’

‘Of course. Though he probably wouldn’t have called it that.’

‘How did you know what Gamble had been doing, Ben?’

‘In the first place, from one of his souvenirs,’ said Cooper. ‘A monkey puzzle cone. They grow on trees like the one in the garden at Riddings Lodge. That has to be where he picked it up. Mr Edson told me himself that there isn’t another tree of that species for miles. Why do you think Gamble ran to Riddings Lodge first when he discovered Zoe Barron’s body?’

‘Because he knew Edson was responsible?’

‘Well, not until he saw the light on. And not the light in the Barrons’ kitchen; I mean the light in Edson’s garage. The photographs confirmed it, of course. He’d snapped Edson with his son, David.’

‘No one even mentioned that David Edson was in the village,’ said Villiers. ‘In fact, no one mentioned him at all. That was suspicious in itself, looking back.’

‘One person mentioned him,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh? Who?’

‘His grandmother, Glenys. I thought she was talking about Russell. And Edson let me go away with that impression. But she wasn’t. When she spoke about children trying to bleed the life out of you, she meant David. She knew David was trying to drain off all the money for himself.’

For Edson, it had been a last desperate stand, as if he could protect what he’d owned by fighting with his neighbours. But he was aiming at the wrong target. Like so many people, he was his own worst enemy.