‘Mr Edson…’
‘No. Stay where you are.’
As his eyes adjusted, Cooper began to make out the shape of the man a few yards away. He couldn’t be sure from here, but it looked as though Edson was standing right on the edge, on the very rim of a flat, rocky outcrop jutting out into space. His figure was outlined against the distant lights somewhere up the valley. Around him was nothing but empty air.
Cooper wiped the rain out of his eyes, and pulled his jacket closer around him. He was starting to get very cold, and the throbbing headache was returning. He knew that if he stayed motionless too long in this wind and rain, exhaustion would begin to get the better of him. He could feel it now, surging in waves through his veins.
This mustn’t take too long. The only thing he could do was distract Edson’s attention, or try to get him to talk.
‘Mr Edson, you’re not a rock climber, are you?’ he said.
‘Me? Good heavens, no.’
‘Much too dangerous for you, I suppose?’
‘I can’t see the point of it. Why do you ask?’
‘We found magnesium carbonate in your car.’
‘Magnesium…?’
‘It’s used sometimes in taxidermy, for whitening skulls. You don’t go in for taxidermy, do you?’
‘No, of course not. Stuffing dead animals?’ Edson stared at him. ‘Sergeant, have you lost your mind? What on earth are you talking about?’
‘The other most common use for magnesium carbonate is in the form of a chalk. It’s useful as a drying agent for the hands. To help the grip, you know. It’s used by most often by gymnasts and weightlifters. And by rock climbers, of course.’
‘I don’t know how it could have got into my car. That’s a bit of a mystery.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ said Cooper.
Through the rain, he saw another figure approaching along the edge. Not from the direction of the car park, but from the packhorse route. Villiers had worked her way round, finding her direction across the moor, even in the dark.
A blast of wind buffeted the edge, and Cooper had difficulty keeping his feet. Edson swayed and held out his arms to balance himself. He was wearing a long black coat, which flapped angrily in the wind. The downpour was becoming torrential now. It pounded on the rocks and cascaded over the edge, forming instant waterfalls.
This had to be done more quickly. Cooper knew he had to try to keep Edson talking, giving Villiers the chance to get into position.
‘We found Barry Gamble’s body,’ he said. ‘Was Mr Gamble trying to blackmail you, sir. Is that what it was?’
Edson laughed. ‘Oh, he tried. In a very roundabout way. He was wasting his time with me, though.’
‘Because of the money, you mean?’
‘The lottery money? It’s all vanished. Extravagant expenditure, a series of bad investments. I had to mortgage the house to release some capital, and now I can’t make the payments on it. Everything will have to go. No, there’s no money left, not a penny. I’m up to my neck in debt.’
‘So the big lottery winner is broke?’
‘Absolutely stony, I’m afraid.’
‘A whole series of mistakes, Mr Edson.’
‘Mistakes? Yes. Too many to count.’
Shivering, Cooper moved a few paces closer, feeling the rock carefully underfoot with each step. He saw Edson turn, and could sense the man looking at him through the rain.
‘It’s a pity I told you that Barry Gamble came to Riddings Lodge that night,’ said Edson. ‘You didn’t know about that until I mentioned it, did you? Gamble hadn’t let on.’
‘No, sir, he hadn’t.’
Edson shook his head. ‘Strange man. I didn’t expect him to be the sort of person to keep a secret. Just one more mistake.’
Finally, Cooper felt close enough to hold a proper conversation, instead of shouting against the noise of the wind and rain. He could almost see Edson’s eyes, just a glimmer of white in the darkness.
‘So what happened, Mr Edson? Why did it go so wrong?’
‘I’m not sure where it all went wrong. Oh, I didn’t know enough about money from the beginning, I suppose. I certainly didn’t realise how quickly it would disappear. And I was a fool to trust Jake Barron. But after that…’
A few more steps, and Cooper was close now. He could see Edson smiling sadly. Yet his expression also seemed to reflect a sort of satisfaction, as if somehow things had actually gone the way he expected.
‘After that was when everything really started to fall apart, surely?’ said Cooper. ‘The death of Zoe Barron wasn’t part of the plan, was it?’
‘What?’
‘I think you just wanted to punish the Barrons. But you hired the wrong people. You’d heard about the Savages and how they got away with their crimes. You figured another attack would just be put down to them. But the people you hired weren’t professionals like the Savages. These boys were complete amateurs. They had no idea how to do the job right. They didn’t know the way to hurt someone without killing them. They didn’t know what to do to make it look like a genuine robbery. A mobile phone and a purse? What sort of haul is that? Right there, when you made that decision – that was your worst mistake.’
Edson took a step closer to the edge, wiping the rain from his face. The wind whipped round him, lashing his hair, flapping his coat open like the wings of a bird.
Cooper began to move towards him, but saw how slippery the wet rock was. He was afraid of startling Edson and making him lose his footing. The edge was too high, the drop too steep and sudden. Making a sudden move would be dangerous. He looked past Edson, met Villiers’ eye, made a small gesture to keep her back.
‘It’s very good,’ said Edson. ‘Your story, I mean. All those things that went wrong. I think it’s probably very accurate, in a way. An example of bad planning. Yes, it was an appalling decision to employ amateurs. It’s always better to spend a bit more money and use professionals. You get what you pay for, after all.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
Edson paused, and looked out over the dark valley.
‘There’s only one problem with that story, Sergeant Cooper,’ he said. ‘The person who hired those thugs to attack the Barrons – it wasn’t me.’
With a loud crack, a slice of rock shifted, dropped, then slowly peeled away from the face of the edge.
Cooper saw Russell Edson held for one second in mid-air, his arms outstretched, his coat flapping around him like wings. He was a huge black bird, screaming and screaming, a creature fighting against the blast of the wind and the pull of gravity. His last moment was only a flicker of movement, a dark thrashing against the sky.
And then he began to fall.
28
Tuesday
On the eastern edges, car windscreens flashed in the sun, like secret signals being sent across the valley. There would be no climbers on the Devil’s Edge today. The rock faces were too wet, and there was too much police activity. Parties of gritstone addicts took one look and went further north, to Froggatt or Stanage.
But at E Division headquarters in West Street, Edendale, plenty was going on. The August bank holiday weekend was over, and Ben Cooper was at his desk, chest-high in paperwork. Who knew there would be so many forms to fill in when you’d just been involved in a fatal incident?
He’d told the whole story to Liz the day before, emptying out his feelings to her all day long, it seemed. And she’d listened to him for hours, as the bank holiday crowds thronged into the Peak District around them, intent on squeezing every last ounce of enjoyment from the scenery, from the picturesque villages, the stately homes and
