Stephen Booth: The Devil’s Edge

Tuesday

A shadow moved across the hall. It was only a flicker of movement, a blur in the light, a motion as tiny and quick as an insect’s.

Zoe Barron stopped and turned, her heart already thumping. She wasn’t sure whether she’d seen anything at all. It had happened in a second, that flick from dark to light, and back again. Just one blink of an eye. She might have imagined the effect from a glint of moonlight off the terracotta tiles. Or perhaps it was only a moth, trapped inside and fluttering its wings as it tried desperately to escape.

In the summer, the house was often full of small flying things that crept in through the windows and hung from the walls. The children said their delicate, translucent wings made them look like tiny angels. But for Zoe, they were more like miniature demons with their bug eyes and waving antennae. It made her shudder to think of them flitting silently around her bedroom at night, waiting their chance to land on her face.

It was one of the drawbacks of living in the countryside. Too much of the outside world intruding. Too many things it was impossible to keep out.

Still uncertain, Zoe looked along the hallway towards the kitchen, and noticed a thin slice of darkness where the utility room door stood open an inch. The house was so quiet that she could hear the hum of the freezer, the tick of the boiler, a murmur from the TV in one of the children’s bedrooms. She listened for a moment, holding her breath. She wondered if a stray cat or a fox had crept in through the back door and was crouching now in the kitchen, knowing she was there in the darkness, its hearing far better than hers. Green eyes glowing, claws unsheathed, an animal waiting to pounce.

But now she was letting her imagination run away with her. She shouldn’t allow irrational fears to fill her mind, when there were so many real ones to be concerned about. With a shake of her head at her own foolishness, Zoe stepped through the kitchen door, and saw what had caused the movement of the shadows. A breath of wind was swaying the ceiling light on its cord.

So a window must have been left open somewhere – probably by one of the workmen, trying to reduce the smell of paint. They’d already been in the house too long, three days past the scheduled completion of this part of the job, and they were trying their best not to cause any more complaints. They’d left so much building material outside that it was always in the way. She dreaded one of the huge timbers falling over in the night. Sometimes, when the wind was strong, she lay awake listening for the crash.

But leaving a window open all night – that would earn them an earful tomorrow anyway. It wasn’t something you did, even here in a village like Riddings. It was a lesson she and Jake had learned when they lived in Sheffield, and one she would never forget. Rural Derbyshire hadn’t proved to be the safe, crime-free place she’d hoped.

Zoe tutted quietly, reassuring herself with the sound. A window left open? It didn’t seem much, really. But that peculiar man who lived in the old cottage on Chapel Close would stop her car in the village and lecture her about it endlessly if he ever found out. He was always hanging around the lanes watching what other people did.

Gamble, that was his name. Barry Gamble. She’d warned the girls to stay away from him if they saw him. You never knew with people like that. You could never be sure where the danger might come from. Greed and envy and malice – they were all around her, like a plague. As if she and Jake could be held responsible for other people’s mistakes, the wrong decisions they had made in their lives.

Zoe realised she was clutching the wine bottle in her hand so hard that her knuckles were white. An idea ran through her head of using the bottle as a weapon. It was full, and so heavy she could do some damage, if necessary. Except now her fingerprints would be all over it.

She laughed at her own nervousness. She was feeling much too tense. She’d been in this state for days, maybe weeks. If Jake saw her right now, he would tease her and tell her she was just imagining things. He would say there was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Relax, chill out, don’t upset the children. Everything’s fine.

But, of course, that wasn’t true. Everyone knew there was plenty to worry about. Everyone here in Riddings, and in all the other villages scattered along this eastern fringe of the Peak District. It was in the papers, and on TV. No one was safe.

Still Zoe hesitated, feeling a sudden urge to turn round and run back to the sitting room to find Jake and hold on to him for safety. But instead she switched on the light and took a step further into the kitchen.

She saw the body of a moth now. It lay dead on the floor, its wings torn, its fragile body crushed to powder. It was a big one, too – faint black markings still discernible on its flattened wings. Was it big enough to have blundered into the light and set it swinging? A moth was so insubstantial. But desperate creatures thrashed around in panic when they were dying. It was always frightening to watch.

There was something strange about the moth. Zoe crouched to look more closely. Her stomach lurched as she made it out. Another pattern was visible in the smear of powder – a section of ridge, like the sole of a boot, as if someone had trodden on the dead insect, squashing it on to the tiles.

She straightened up again quickly, looking around, shifting her grip on the bottle, trying to fight the rising panic.

‘Jake?’ she said.

A faint thump on the ground outside. Was that what she’d heard, or not? A footstep too heavy for a fox. The wrong sound for a falling timber.

This wasn’t right. The only person who might legitimately be outside the house at this time of night was Jake, and she’d left him in the sitting room, sprawled on the couch and clutching a beer. If he’d gone out to the garage for some reason, he would have told her. If he’d gone to the front door, he would have passed her in the hall.

So it wasn’t Jake outside. It wasn’t her husband moving about now on the decking, fumbling at the back door. But still she clung on to the belief, the wild hope, that there was nothing to worry about. I’m perfectly safe. Everything’s fine.

‘Jake?’ she called.

And again, louder. Much louder, and louder still, until it became a scream.

‘Jake? Jake? Jake! ’

Six miles from Riddings, Detective Sergeant Ben Cooper turned the corner of Edendale High Street into Hollowgate and stopped to let a bus pull into the terminus. The town hall lay just ahead of him, closed at this time of night but illuminated by spotlights, which picked out the pattern in its stonework that had earned it its nickname of the Wavy House. Across the road, the Starlight Cafe was doing good business as usual, with a steady stream of customers. Taxis were lining up for their busiest time of the day. It was almost ten o’clock on an ordinary August evening.

The pubs were even busier than the Starlight, of course. Cooper could hear the music pounding from the Wheatsheaf and the Red Lion, the two pubs on either side of the market square. A crowd of youngsters screamed and laughed by the war memorial, watched by a uniformed PC and a community support officer in bright yellow high-vis jackets, the pair of them standing in the entrance to an alley near the Raj Mahal.

Even in Edendale there were often fights at closing time, and drug dealers operating wherever they could find a suitable spot. On Friday and Saturday nights there would be a personnel carrier with a prisoner cage in the back, and multiple foot patrols of officers on the late shift. A change came over the town then; a place that had looked so quaint during the day, with its cobbled alleys and tall stone buildings, revealed its Jekyll and Hyde nature.