didn’t do you justice. What did you say your name was again?’
‘DC…I mean, Acting DS Cooper.’
‘Forgotten who you are? Join the club.’
Cooper turned and walked a few paces away from him, found he was against the wall, and turned back. Deacon looked at him, smiling gently.
‘Thought you were meeting a monster, did you?’
Cooper found he was no longer looking at the man of his memory. This wasn’t the watchful predator of his recollection, the figure crouched on the rock above Dovedale. His mind had played him a trick, conjured something out of his imagination. And Deacon was right — he’d come here with an expectation.
‘I did my time,’ said Deacon. ‘But that’s not enough, I know. Not enough for society.’
‘No.’
A four-year prison sentence meant that Sean Deacon would be permanently on the Sex Offender Register. That was unless he took advantage of a High Court ruling that indefinite registration was incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. The court had declared that it denied offenders a chance to prove they no longer posed a risk of re-offending.
Cooper tried to remember the man he’d once interviewed for that attempted abduction, the suspected paedophile slouching from an interview room to a cell in the custody suite at Edendale. That look over his shoulder, the tilt of the head, the distinctive way he moved. This was the same man. And yet he wasn’t.
‘What were you doing in Dovedale?’ asked Cooper again.
‘I’d been walking. It’s my hobby, when I’m not at work. I was on the moors west of Tissington. I’d parked my car in a lay-by on the A515, and I followed a footpath near Gaglane Barn to look at an old lime kiln in the middle of the fields there. The path comes out above Dovedale, near Reynard’s Cave.’
Cooper nodded. It sounded about right so far.
‘And then I heard all the noise in the dale, so I climbed up on to the arch to see what was happening,’ said Deacon. He looked at Cooper again. ‘And that was it.’
‘You’re sure you weren’t near the children at all?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. Do you have any witnesses who say otherwise?’
‘No, we don’t,’ admitted Cooper.
Deacon studied him. Now Cooper felt he was the one being assessed, and perhaps failing to live up to expectations.
‘I heard about the little girl who drowned,’ said Deacon. ‘You were the one who tried to save her, weren’t you? I read it in the paper.’
‘Yes, that was me. But I failed.’
Deacon shook his head sadly. ‘It’s so often the case, that we either succeed or fail. Society doesn’t allow for anything else, does it?’
Tm not sure what you mean.’
The man stood up slowly. Cooper felt no sense of threat from him at all. In his white overalls, he looked faintly pathetic. Yet he had his own strange air of dignity.
‘I’ll admit there was another reason why I was on top of the arch near Reynard’s Cave,’ he said.
‘What is that?’
‘I like being high up.’
‘So you can see what’s going on? Check out who’s around?’
Deacon shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that. I like the idea of flying. Don’t you?’
‘I don’t think about it much.’
‘When I’m high up like that, I think about flying. Or perhaps about falling.’
Cooper looked at him again. Did Deacon have suicidal tendencies? It wasn’t uncommon among sex offenders. Their condition was often incurable, and many could see no other way out of a life of constant suspicion.
Deacon smiled sadly. ‘Life is all about falling and flying, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Falling and flying. If you’re good at what you do in life, you fly. If you’re bad at it, you fall. It’s as simple as that, Acting DS Cooper. The same with death, really. Up or down, falling or flying. We can only do one or the other. There’s no in between, is there?’
It was a pity that his name had appeared in the paper. Cooper picked up a copy of the Eden Valley Times on his way back to West Street. The story wasn’t difficult to find, since it was on the front page, and they’d dug out some old photograph of him from their archives. It made him look about fifteen years old.
Publicity was rarely a positive thing for an individual police officer, unless you happened to be involved in a community project, helping out at a fun day or giving kids fishing lessons. And then it was pretty much compulsory. When it came to major incidents, contact with the media was best left to the bosses and the Media Office.
But the headline ‘Cop’s brave bid to save drowning tot’ couldn’t do much damage, no matter how over the top it was. The subs on the Eden Valley Times loved short words, preferably no more than three letters. ‘Bid’, ‘cop’, ‘tot’ made a perfect combination. They hardly needed a verb.
Of course, Edendale would soon be without a local rag altogether. Everyone knew that the Eden Valley Times was on its last legs. The paper hadn’t been locally owned for years. Its present proprietors were a big publishing corporation based in Edinburgh, who had centralized everything they could think of. They’d moved admin to Peterborough, page production to Chesterfield, and printing to Gateshead. The edition Cooper held in his hands felt flimsy, no more than forty pages, when once it had been more than eighty.
Advertising revenue had fallen through the floor for papers like the Times. People got their news from TV or the internet these days. And once the recession cut the legs from under the Property and Motors sections, that was pretty much the last nail in the coffin. There were a few reporters left in the office on the corner of Fargate, but they rarely ventured out on the streets. Everything had to be done by phone when they were so shorthanded.
Still, they’d managed to spell his name right, and the subs in Chesterfield hadn’t messed up the story too much. He supposed he ought to be grateful for small mercies. The trouble with publicity like this was that everyone he met would want to ask him about it, to pat him on the back and say ‘Well done, anyway’ or ‘Hard luck — you tried.’ It wasn’t what he needed. Maybe he should keep his head down for a few days until it had all blown over.
Back in the office, everyone was pestering him for attention. They needed his advice, they wanted his signature, they had messages for him, they had questions. Always more questions.
‘Want me to follow that up?’
‘I can run with that if you like, Ben.’
‘The DI wants to know why it hasn’t been actioned.’
He really needed some advice. Cooper found himself automatically scrolling to Fry’s number on his mobile. At the last second, he remembered that she wasn’t around. Well, he could phone her, but she was in Birmingham. She would have no interest in what he was doing back in Derbyshire. And why should she?
Finally, Cooper called a meeting of his team. Gavin Murfin was the senior DC, as the longest serving. Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst made up the rest of the team. They were hardly an army of crime fighters. But they were doing their best, one case at a time.
‘So what’s the status of the drugs case on the Devonshire Estate? The Michael Lowndes enquiry.’
‘Our information says that there’ll be another meeting tonight,’ said Murfin. ‘We could nail them this time.’
‘Let’s do it, then,’ said Cooper.
‘Really?’
Three mouths fell open.
‘Diane would usually tell us to fill in all the paperwork and do a risk assessment,’ said Murfin.
‘It was all done the first time, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, yeah, but — ’
‘I’ll sign it off, then. Let’s set up the tasks. If we pull it off, I’d like Becky and Luke to make the arrests. Is that okay with you, Gavin?’
Murfin managed to control his eyebrows. ‘No problem, boss.’
While the others busied themselves, Cooper picked up the paper, read the headline again, and sighed. Well,
