Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

‘I see.’

Chadwick screwed up his eyes and gazed into the distance, staring at something that Cooper couldn’t see.

‘Or maybe…’

‘What?’

‘Well, I wonder sometimes. Perhaps everyone is just waiting for me to do the decent thing, and top myself.’

Too surprised to know how to respond, Cooper watched Chadwick turn away and walk slowly into the house, as if seeking the shade. He moved like a wounded animal, creeping away to find somewhere quiet and dark.

Cooper looked at Mrs Chadwick. She smiled sadly.

‘I’m sorry. He’s been like that for a while. It doesn’t seem to get any better.’

‘Do you have any family living here?’

‘We have a daughter, Bryony. She’s seventeen, nearly eighteen.’

‘Where would she have been last night?’

‘Oh, she was out.’

Mrs Chadwick became more relaxed now that she had been steered on to a different subject.

‘Bryony got her A level results last week,’ she said. ‘So she was out celebrating with her friends from school. She’ll be off to uni in September.’

‘Good grades? All A stars?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Sometimes I think I’m the only person who never got any,’ said Cooper.

The woman was becoming more animated as she spoke of her daughter. This was a far more comfortable topic, something to be seized on gratefully when life was going wrong.

‘We wanted her to do a gap year,’ she said. ‘The way we both did ourselves when we were students. It was a terrific experience for us. And, of course, it helped us to work through in our minds what we really wanted to do with our lives. I don’t think you can do that without seeing a bit of the world, do you?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But Bryony wasn’t interested in a gap year. She says she knows what she wants to do. She’s set out her plan, and she needs to get on with it and earn her qualifications if she’s going to meet her goals. A gap year would just be a waste of time and set back her schedule. She’s very driven, you see. Very ambitious. Obviously we’re giving her all the support she needs. We’re very proud of her.’

‘I’m sure you are.’

A shadow of anxiety passed across her face, and she glanced back towards the house. It was sad that a few moments of silence was enough to cause that apprehension. But she saw her husband pass in front of a window, and the concern eased.

‘She’s chosen her university herself, too,’ she said. ‘I went to Oxford. St Hilda’s. But Bryony wanted to go to Bristol for some reason. She insisted on putting it down as her first choice. Something about them having the best reputation in her subject. As I said, she’s very…’

‘Driven?’

‘Quite.’

A very slim girl with long dark hair appeared round a corner of the house. She saw Cooper, and walked quickly away again.

‘Was that your daughter?’ he asked.

‘That’s Bryony, yes.’

Mrs Chadwick escorted Cooper to his car. Usually people were only too glad to see him leave, and shut the door behind him as quickly as possible. But this woman seemed to want to linger. Did she want to talk more about the achievements of her daughter? Or was there another subject she longed to discuss, but was afraid to force on him? Something she might be ashamed of. That self-conscious, embarrassed look again. She was a person afraid of showing too much emotion, yet struggling to hold it inside any longer.

‘So what actually happened, Mrs Chadwick?’ asked Cooper.

‘Happened?’

‘To your husband?’

She nodded, and her shoulders seemed to slump, as if a great weight of tension had been lifted from her.

‘A child pushed him too far one day,’ she said. ‘A fourteen-year-old kid. Student, we’re supposed to call them, aren’t we? Cocky little devil he was, by all accounts. Everyone knew he was trouble. He just kept pushing and pushing to see how far he could go, wanted to find out what he could get away with. You know the type. You must see them all the time in your job.’

‘Yes, of course. Usually when they’re a bit older.’

‘Well, perhaps you wouldn’t see so many of them if teachers like Bill were allowed to keep proper discipline in our schools.’

Cooper knew that a lot of police officers would agree with this view. More than one of them had gone the same way as Mr Chadwick when they’d been pushed too far. There was only so much you could take, after all. Everyone had a breaking point.

‘Is your husband getting help?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. Regular counselling sessions. Medication for his depression. I don’t think the medication is working properly yet.’ She paused. ‘That, or he’s stopped taking it.’

Cooper glanced at her, saw the strain in her eyes. ‘It must be a difficult thing to live with.’

She smiled through a sudden welling of tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is. We just hope that we can all rely on some support when we need it, don’t we?’

Cooper drove back along Curbar Lane to Valley View and took a look at the Barrons’ property with new eyes, trying to see it as a passer-by might.

One thing immediately struck him. At the front, everything seemed to have been done to advertise the fact that there was plenty worth stealing inside – electric gates with an entryphone system, a security camera pointing at the gate, little yellow signs warning of an electric fence topping the dry-stone wall. Yet at the back, the property had been pretty much left open, the fences low and the trees cleared to provide a view of the edge from the patio and balcony. Whoever designed this landscape had seen the edge as an attraction, not a threat.

He supposed most of the residents of Riddings would be commuters, or well-off retired people like the Hollands. These weren’t the seriously rich, just the affluent and comfortable. Definitely not a tourist-friendly village, though.

Many of these people would have come here from the city, seeking peace and quiet, looking for a refuge from noise and traffic – and an escape from crime. Perhaps they had encountered violence on the streets of Sheffield and Manchester, or become nervous at the stories of robberies and shootings every week in the newspapers, feared the monsters stalking their cities. So they had sought refuge in a rural haven. The village of Riddings, in the eastern edges. Secluded properties, respectable neighbours. Yet it seemed that for some of them, their monsters had followed them to their sanctuary.

Of course, everyone had monsters in their lives. Most people left them behind in their childhood, locked away safely in a fading corner of memory. Some kept them with them, all the way through their lives. Cooper was one of those people, so he knew all about it. His monsters were always close by, glimpsed from the corner of his eye, forever lurking in the darkness, breathing quietly in the silent hours of the night.

He paused outside the Barrons’ back door, watching the sunlight catching the windows, hearing the birds singing in the trees, listening to the quiet engine of the black van as it took Zoe Barron’s body away.

He knew that most people never met their monsters in the flesh.

But a few were not so lucky.

Handymen, gardeners, tree surgeons. The village noticeboard advertised all of their services, alongside the times of mobile library visits, instructions for the council’s blue bag recycling scheme, and a poster announcing the attractions of Riddings Show, which was due to take place on Saturday.

Cooper was waiting for his team to rendezvous and compare notes. They had arranged to meet in the centre of the village, where an ancient stone horse trough provided the central feature on a few square yards of cobbles. From here, he could see Union Jacks flying over several properties.