Scared to Live

there surely couldn’t be more bad news already. But he could read a lot into one word from his brother.

‘What is it? Something wrong with one of the girls?’

‘No, they’re fine,’ said Matt. ‘Well, I think so.’

‘You’re not making much sense, Matt.’

‘Look, Ben, I’ve made an appointment to go into the surgery on Friday. I want to talk to Dr Joyce. And if necessary, I’ll ask to see the specialist who treated Mum.’

‘Why? We know what happened to her — it was a series of strokes. It happens all the time in people of her age.’

‘I don’t mean the strokes. I mean the other problem.’

The family had rarely referred to Isabel Cooper’s condition by name. For a long time, it had been ‘Mum’s problem’. Towards the end, before she died in Edendale District General from a brain haemorrhage, it had become ‘the other problem’. Now, it seemed to Ben there was no point in trying to avoid spelling it out. Mum wasn’t around any more to be upset if it inadvertently slipped out in her presence.

‘Oh, the schizophrenia.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t understand, Matt. What do you want to find out that we don’t already know?’

‘I can’t talk to you about it on the phone — it’s too complicated. Can you come over some time? I’ve got a lot of stuff to show you.’

‘Well, I’m going to be a bit busy this week — ’

‘So what’s new?’

‘All right, what if I call at the farm tonight when I come off duty?’

‘That’ll do.’

‘See you, then.’

Cooper put out a bowl of cat food and placed it on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. Randy was an animal with a fixed routine and firm ideas about his territory.

Then he went back to the fridge, took a deep breath and eased open the door. He scooped out some rotten tomatoes, half a carton of sour milk, and a wedge of Stilton with its blue veins blossoming into a furry carpet. They all went into a plastic bin liner. He wasn’t sure any of the items accounted for the smell, though. Poking in the salad tray at the bottom of the main compartment, he found a liquefied lettuce, which probably did.

When he’d got rid of the worst, he tied up the bin liner and put it to one side. Now he ought to remove everything else from the fridge and give it a good clean. Probably it could do with defrosting, too.

But then Cooper hesitated. It would do later on, wouldn’t it? Tomorrow, even. He closed the fridge, put the bag near the back door, and returned to the sitting room. He put on his shoes and jacket, and checked how much money he had in his wallet. Then he made sure his phone was fully charged. Allowing your phone battery to go flat was as bad as letting your car run out of petrol. Both things happened now and then, but it was better if they happened to someone else.

Finally, he left the flat. For once, even the smell of the morning traffic was like a breath of fresh air.

He was unsettled by his conversation with Matt. He hoped his brother wasn’t having to cope with too many worries at once. There were certainly some decisions to be made about the future of Bridge End, though. The new farming support payments favoured the more productive farms in the valleys, and an upland farmer’s income could be halved, unless he changed his ways. The suckler herd might have to go, for a start — no matter how environmentally friendly and picturesque they were, grazing cattle were becoming as economically unviable as sheep.

Matt could intensify the dairy herd, or leave part of the land unfarmed, in return for environmental grants. On the other hand, he could abandon the idea of running a profitable farm altogether and get himself a job stacking shelves in a supermarket.

On his way through the market square, Cooper pulled out his mobile and chose a number from his phone book. His call was answered almost straightaway.

‘Hi, it’s me. How are you this morning?’

She sounded pleased to hear from him, and the sound of her voice alone made him feel better. He didn’t know how she did it; perhaps it came of being a civilian.

‘Oh, I’m fine, too,’ he said. ‘No, really. There’s nothing wrong at all. I just wanted to find out how you were.’

He listened to her talk for a while, neither of them saying much, but enough to put a smile on his face as he crossed Hollowgate towards the Raj Mahal and the pedestrianized area.

He had to end the call when a couple of acquaintances stopped to say hello. Cooper couldn’t place their names at first. But he knew so many people around Edendale that it wasn’t surprising. Faces from his childhood haunted him constantly. He’d see an old schoolfriend passing in the street, then immediately another and another. It was like the way a phrase he’d heard for the first time suddenly seemed to be repeated everywhere, as if someone was trying to send him a message. What sort of message could these familiar faces be trying to convey? This is where you belong, perhaps.

Later that morning, Cooper found himself watching a man in a grey sports jacket approaching a cash machine outside Somerfield’s supermarket. Running his finger along the edge of the card slot, the man glanced over his shoulder with an apologetic smile. He wasn’t sure whether he liked being watched or not.

There were two ATMs at Somerfield’s, both set into the outside wall near the trolley park, about fifteen yards from the main entrance. A small queue of shoppers had formed at the other machine, fidgeting with their carrier bags and purses.

‘If you feel an obstruction of any kind, don’t use it. That’s the best advice. Usually there are a couple of tiny prongs. Here, see?’

With a flick of the finger, the man pulled out a thin, clear sleeve of rigid plastic. He held it up to reveal a loop at the back.

‘This is the old Lebanese Loop trick. The loop retains a card when it’s inserted. Since the machine can’t read the magnetic strip, it keeps asking you to re-enter your PIN. Someone standing behind you watches you tap your number in. When you walk away, the suspect removes the card and empties your account. Bingo.’

‘Surely that type of device is easy to detect?’ said someone in the watching group. ‘We just saw you do it.’

‘But I know what to look for.’

PC Steve Judson had greying hair, a little longer than favoured by most police officers. He worked with the Plastic Crime Unit, a team struggling to deal with a mounting wave of cash and credit card fraud. According to the latest figures, it was big business — worth at least forty million pounds a year across the country.

Judson looked at the queue for the adjacent cash machine. ‘This is a typical location. The ATMs would be more secure inside, but the store isn’t open twenty-four hours. Some customers want to use them late at night, when this car park is probably deserted.’

‘Is that when the biggest risk is, rather than when the cash machines are busy?’ asked a female DC, one of two who’d driven over the hills from B Division for the plastic crime session.

‘The risk is different. If you look at the people in the queue there — they’re close enough to each other to make shoulder surfing easy. But at night, when the place is empty, you’d be pretty damn suspicious of somebody who came and peered over your shoulder, wouldn’t you?’

There were other officers present in the car park who’d come from Nottinghamshire and even from Leicestershire. Strangers, but probably future colleagues. No one was talking about their future this morning, but it must have been in everyone’s minds when they greeted each other.

‘It isn’t so long ago that the NCIS bulletins were warning of cash machine gangs spreading out of London down the M4 to the West Country. Did they get it wrong?’

‘No, not at all. Those gangs did good business in the West Country, so they decided to go nationwide. Now they operate in any place they can recruit enough illegals.’

‘Illegals?’

Cooper could hear a few sets of antennae going up, alert for derogatory remarks. It was always a tough call, knowing when to report a colleague for political incorrectness. If you tolerated it, your own career could be on the line.