Stephen Booth - Black Dog

‘He thinks more of them than me, anyway. That’s what I say. He’s proved it now.’

‘Let’s forget about it for a bit, Grandma. Enjoy your tea.’

‘You’re a good girl. You were always his favourite, Helen. Why don’t you talk to him?’

‘I will try,’ promised Helen.

She stood by the old woman’s armchair, looking down on her white hair, so thin she could clearly see the pink scalp. She wanted to put her arm round her grandmother’s shoulders and hug her, to tell her it would be all right. But she knew that Gwen would be embarrassed, and in any case she wasn’t at all sure that it would be all right. A sudden surge of affection and frustration made her turn away.

Then she saw her grandfather, a small figure way down at the bottom of the hillside path, just emerging from the trees at the foot of Raven’s Side. Whether it was something about the way he moved or the set of his shoulders, she couldn’t say. But she knew immediately that there was something badly wrong.

Gwen cocked her head and peered at Helen, sensing the tension in her silence.

‘What is it, dear?’

‘Nothing, Grandma.’

Helen unlatched the back door and stood on the whitewashed step. Suddenly she felt an irrational flood of memories streaming out of the old cottage behind her like coils of smoke escaping from a burning house. They were childhood memories, mostly of her grandfather – memories of him taking her by the hand as they walked on this same path to look at the fish jumping in the stream, or to pick daisies for a daisy chain; of her grandfather proudly sitting her on his knee as he showed her how he filled his pipe with tobacco and lit it with the long coloured-paper tapers. Fleeting smells flickered by her senses, passing in a second, yet each one with enough emotional power to fill her eyes with instant tears. They were the remembered smells of pipe smoke and Brylcreem and boot polish.

Harry had always seemed to be polishing his shoes. He still did. It was one of those signs that she knew her grandfather by even as he had changed over the years. Without those signs, she thought, old age might have made him unrecognizable to the child who had known the strong, indestructible man in his fifties.

It was in just the same way that, at this moment, she knew her grandfather only by his walk. It was a slow, purposeful walk, upright and solemn, the pace of a soldier at a funeral, bearing the coffin of a dead comrade.

She heard the helicopter turn again and come straight towards her. Two faces stared down at her, expressionless behind their dark glasses. She felt as though the watching policemen could see straight into her heart. Their presence was somehow personal and intimate, and yet for ever too far away.

‘OK, take a break.’

The word came down the line from the uniformed sergeant at the opposite end from Ben Cooper. The men in blue overalls and wellingtons backed away from the line of search and sat on the tussocks of rough grass in a half-circle. Someone produced a flask of tea, someone else a bottle of orange juice.

PC Garnett settled down comfortably, tossing his pole aside, taking off his cap to reveal receding hair cropped short at the sides. They said it was the helmets that made so many policemen start to lose their hair early. Cooper himself was conscious that one day he would start to see a thinning on either side of his forehead. Everybody told him that his fine brown hair was just like his father’s, who had never been anything but halfway bald, as far as he could remember. So far, though, he was still able to let a lock of hair fall across his forehead as he had always done. Fashions had tended to pass him by.

Garnett smiled as he mopped his brow with his sleeve and eased himself into gossip mode. ‘So what about this new recruit in your department, Cooper? The new DC?’

‘I’ve not met him yet. I’ve only just come back from leave.’

‘It’s a “her”, mate, a “her”. Diane Fry, they call her.’

‘Right.’

‘She’s from Birmingham.’

‘I’ve not heard anything about her. I expect she’ll be all right.’

‘According to Dave Rennie, she’s a bit of a hard-faced cow. Could be a looker, he says, but she doesn’t bother. Blonde, but has her hair cut short. Too tall, too skinny, no make-up, always wears trousers. A bit of a stroppy bitch.’

‘You haven’t even met her,’ protested Cooper.

‘Well, you know the type. Probably another lesbian.’

Cooper blew out an exasperated breath. ‘That’s ridiculous. You can’t go around saying things like that. You don’t know anything about her.’

Garnett had the sense to hear the irritation in Cooper’s voice and didn’t argue. He idly pulled a clump of dandelions and shredded the leaves between his fingers. But Cooper couldn’t let the subject rest.

‘You know what it’s like for the women as well as I do, Garnett – some of them just try too hard. She’ll fit in fine after a week or two, you’ll see. They usually do.’

‘I dunno about that. I’ve a feeling you’ll not have time to be her best mate, though, lad. She’ll be up and away in no time.’

‘Why? Does she go ballooning?’

‘Ha, ha.’ Garnett ignored the sarcasm, in fact was probably impervious to it when he had a good subject of gossip. ‘She comes with a bit of a “rep” actually. A potential high-flier, they reckon. Ambitious.’

‘Oh yeah? She’ll have to prove herself first.’

‘Maybe.’

The clouds of tiny flies were getting thicker as they gathered around the men’s heads, attracted by their sweat and the sweet smell of the orange juice. The PC looked smug.

‘Come on, what do you mean?’ said Cooper. ‘You don’t just get promotion without showing you’re worth it.’

‘Get real, mate. She’s female. You know – two tits and a fanny, always puts the toilet seat down.’

‘Yeah, I’ve noticed that. So what?’

‘So what? So what ? So the force is short of female officers in supervisory ranks, especially in CID. Don’t you read the reports? You just watch, old son – provided she keeps her nose clean and always smiles nicely at the top brass, Detective Constable Fry will shoot up that promotion ladder like she’s got a rocket up her arse.’

Cooper was about to protest when the shout went up from the contact man. ‘DC Cooper! Is DC Cooper here? Your boss wants you. Urgent.’

The instructions from DI Hitchens were terse, and the address he gave Cooper was in Moorhay, the village visible on the brow of the hill above the woods. Communities in this area tended to gather around the thousand-foot contour, the valley bottoms being too narrow.

‘Check it out, Cooper, and fast. We either get to the girl in the next two hours or we lose the whole night. You know what that could mean.’

‘I’m on my way, sir.’

‘Take somebody with you. Who’ve you got?’

Cooper looked back at the group of men lounging on the grass. His gaze passed across PC Garnett and a couple of other middle-aged bobbies, the overweight sergeant, two female PCs from Matlock and the three rangers.

‘No CID officers, sir. I’ll have to borrow a uniformed PC.’

There was a suggestion of a sigh at the other end of the line.

‘Do it then. But get a move on.’

Cooper explained as quickly as he could to the sergeant and was given a tall, muscular young bobby of about twenty called Wragg, who perked up at the prospect of some action.

‘Follow me as best you can.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m right with you,’ said Wragg, flexing the muscles in his shoulders.

The path up to Moorhay wound back through the trees to where a kissing gate gave access through the dry-stone walls into a field where black and white dairy cattle had recently been turned back in after milking. The field had been cut for hay a few weeks before, and the grass was short and springy underfoot as Ben Cooper ran along the side of the wall, the heat and sweat prickling on his brow and his legs spasming with pain as he forced them on. Wragg kept pace with him easily, but soon dropped his tendency to ask questions when Cooper didn’t respond. He needed all his breath for running.