‘I wonder what you have in your past, Mr Edson.’
‘I’m CRB checked, you know. I couldn’t work as a children’s entertainer if I wasn’t.’
‘Yes, we’re aware of that. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to discuss two murders. Those of Jake and Zoe Barron.’
As the interview went on, David Edson’s facade began to crumble. Cooper was glad to see it. His attitude was all show, after all. Just like his father’s.
In the end, Edson ignored his solicitor’s urgent advice, and blurted out the one thing that was most important for him to say.
‘I thought that killing them would make me feel better. But it didn’t.’
Carol Villiers was the first to congratulate Cooper. The rest of the CID team milled around in celebratory mood, their paperwork forgotten for a while.
‘You were right on that one, Carol,’ said Cooper. ‘What infuriated the Edsons most was seeing the Barrons still spending money when they were about to lose everything. But David was the most infuriated. He was filled with rage. He blamed Jake Barron for his father’s situation.’
‘That’s a bit like a jealous lover, too, when you think about it,’ said Villiers.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, instead of blaming his father, he blamed the object of his father’s obsession. He took the view that Barron was ruining his life, and his future prospects.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, Barron was draining off all the money that should have come his way. David had built all his expectations on that money.’
‘So it was David who hired Summers, knowing that the job would be blamed on the Savages.’
‘Yes. And there was never any intention to steal anything, just to grab a couple of things to make it look like a burglary. They went through a gap in the fence to get to and from Valley View, then up the track to dispose of the haul. They spent the night in Edson’s garage, then drove their van out next morning.’
‘Meanwhile, his father and grandmother calmly went off to have dinner at Bauers,’ said Villiers.
‘It must have been quite a shock for Russell to find Barry Gamble turning up on his doorstep that night. Gamble had figured it out. He wasn’t stupid. He knew all about people. And why wouldn’t he, when he spent so much of his time watching them?’
‘He’d been spying on the Edsons, then.’
‘Of course. Though he probably wouldn’t have called it that.’
‘How did you know what Gamble had been doing, Ben?’
‘In the first place, from one of his souvenirs,’ said Cooper. ‘A monkey puzzle cone. They grow on trees like the one in the garden at Riddings Lodge. That has to be where he picked it up. Mr Edson told me himself that there isn’t another tree of that species for miles. Why do you think Gamble ran to Riddings Lodge first when he discovered Zoe Barron’s body?’
‘Because he knew Edson was responsible?’
‘Well, not until he saw the light on. And not the light in the Barrons’ kitchen; I mean the light in Edson’s garage. The photographs confirmed it, of course. He’d snapped Edson with his son, David.’
‘No one even mentioned that David Edson was in the village,’ said Villiers. ‘In fact, no one mentioned him at all. That was suspicious in itself, looking back.’
‘One person mentioned him,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh? Who?’
‘His grandmother, Glenys. I thought she was talking about Russell. And Edson let me go away with that impression. But she wasn’t. When she spoke about children trying to bleed the life out of you, she meant David. She knew David was trying to drain off all the money for himself.’
For Edson, it had been a last desperate stand, as if he could protect what he’d owned by fighting with his neighbours. But he was aiming at the wrong target. Like so many people, he was his own worst enemy.
Cooper had never got the chance to talk more to Russell Edson about how the chalk traces came to be in his car. Of course Russell wasn’t a climber himself. But Cooper had wanted to say: We could ask your son, perhaps. Because he is a rock climber, isn’t he, Mr Edson?
‘Some time ago, David Edson was climbing on Riddings Edge with a friend when he fell from the face and struck his head on the rock.’
‘He was the climber who did a highball off Hell’s Reach and nearly died?’ said Villiers.
‘Yes. It was a close-run thing. He lost consciousness and went into a fit. He was stabilised by paramedics and a doctor from the mountain rescue team, then airlifted to Nottingham to be treated in the neurological unit at Queen’s Medical Centre.’
‘But he recovered.’
‘Yes. Later on, he gave a big donation to the mountain rescue people. And he went back to rock climbing.’
‘Those white handprints?’ asked Villiers. ‘There was never any explanation…’
‘David Edson was back climbing on Riddings Edge that day. I imagine he looked down from one of those spurs of rock on the edge, and saw how easy it would be to get into the grounds of Valley View. You can’t appreciate that from any other point – certainly not from anywhere in the village. You need to get the perspective, you see. You’ve got to achieve that bird’s-eye viewpoint you can only get from the edge. So you might say it was the Devil’s Edge that put the idea into his mind. It presented him with the temptation, just when he was most open to it.’
‘That must have been earlier in the day, during daylight.’
‘Of course. At the end of his climbing session, David went back down the edge. But instead of returning to his car, he tested out the route on the ground. No doubt he took note of the derelict farm building and the slurry pits, and figured out how he could use them. Then he got as far as the back wall at Valley View, and pulled himself up to look in.’
‘And that was when he left the handprints.’
‘Yes.’ Cooper looked at the clouds rolling in across the horizon. ‘In a way, he was unlucky. Unlucky that the weather stayed good for a few days. Rain washes the chalk off. Those handprints will be gone now.’
‘And he acted really fast, didn’t he? He signed up Adrian Summers as his accomplice and they did it that night.’
‘One thing they didn’t reckon with was Barry Gamble,’ said Cooper. ‘He was right on the spot.’
‘Nothing like a bit of good surveillance.’
‘And then Summers got greedy. Well, he’d been getting away with it for weeks, and he was being built up as a folk hero, some sort of Robin Hood figure. He must have started to believe his own press, and thought he was untouchable. After he’d done the job with Edson, he saw an opportunity and two nights later decided to check out the neighbouring property. The Hollands were never involved in anything. Martin Holland was an incidental death.’
‘Collateral damage,’ said Villiers.
‘Summers is in custody anyway. They scooped him up in Sheffield, along with another accomplice.’
‘So the Savages’ time is over.’
‘I wonder, though,’ said Cooper.
‘What?’
‘Whether David Edson ever did recover fully from the head injury he suffered in that fall from the rock face. A good defence lawyer will be able to come up with medical evidence to show that he’s been left with a degree of permanent brain damage – enough to change his personality and impair his judgement. He’ll get manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.’
‘Well, that’s the way it goes.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s exactly how it goes.’
‘Russell and David Edson are no one’s idea of folk heroes,’ said Villiers. ‘But they’re not complete monsters either.’
No, thought Cooper. Who needed monsters and devils, when people had so much evil in them?
‘Well, anyway,’ he said, ‘everybody else in Riddings deserves a medal.’
‘What for?’
