Scared to Live

‘In fact, there’d have to be three stray shots, wouldn’t there?’

‘True.’

‘And — I’m sorry, Ben — but Mr Ridgeway only has an air rifle.’

‘So he says.’

Fry gave it some thought. ‘I didn’t like either of the Ridgeways — as you probably gathered.’

‘You don’t always make a secret of your opinion.’

‘And it’s true that they sounded as though they were already offering some kind of justification. When they talked about alien invasions, they didn’t just mean squirrels.’

‘Can I hear a “but” coming?’

‘Well, I think they’re probably all mouth. The really dangerous ones act on their beliefs — they don’t talk about them to any police officer who happens to come calling.’

‘I see.’

‘And, unfortunately, we don’t have any evidence to justify searching their house for an automatic weapon.’

‘Ah, that is true. We could ask them to let us do it voluntarily, though.’

‘Tell you what, why don’t you suggest your idea to the DI yourself, Ben? I’m only a supernumerary on the Shepherd enquiry. I’ve got other fish to catch.’

Before he switched off his computer, Cooper checked the Matlock Bath webcam to see if it was still running, as the site claimed.

When the picture came up, he saw it was already dark in Matlock Bath. He looked at his watch. Six o’clock. He hadn’t realized it had got so late.

When he looked back at the screen, the webcam picture was reloading. Now the headlights of two cars were approaching the camera. But the only other colour in the image came from strings of lights hung along both banks of the river, and across the road. Some of the illuminations came close to the camera, mounted on the roof of Life in a Lens. Coloured lights also framed the iron girders of the Jubilee Bridge. The bridge was reflected on the surface water as a black, shapeless mass that disappeared into the trees on the other side of the river.

Across the river and into the trees. Where did that phrase come from? It must be a song, or possibly a book title. It made him think about the gunman who’d shot down a harmless middle-aged woman. If he was a professional, then there was something that no one was admitting out loud. He would be long gone from the area by now.

Never mind across the river and into the trees — their suspect could have been on the other side of the world before the clock even began to tick on the Shepherd enquiry.

Later that evening, Liz Petty sat in the upstairs room of Aitch’s Wine Bar in Bakewell and accepted a glass of Merlot.

‘Thanks, Ben.’

‘Cheers.’

Cooper sat down next to her with his bottle of beer. The remains of their dinner had been cleared away, and he was starting to wonder whether chocolate truffle cake would go all right with the plum-and-chilli sauce that had been on the char-grilled chicken.

‘Anyway, Quinton Downie was right,’ said Petty. ‘Fire can be one of the most difficult things to investigate. So many factors influence its behaviour that a scene can be very misleading.’

She took a drink of wine and gazed out of the window at Buxton Road. Liz lived just off Fly Hill, a couple of minutes’ walk from the wine bar, in a three-storey terraced cottage she rented from her uncle. The third-floor bedroom had a terrific view beyond Bakewell towards the golf club.

‘I remember something we were told on the course I did,’ said Petty. ‘It was a real incident, with photographs. A young child who’d died in a fire. It made me think of that case when I heard there were two children involved at Darwin Street. I know these two weren’t burned to death, but still …’

Cooper waited, recognizing that she needed to sort her feelings out before she put them into words. Whatever it was that she wanted to tell him, it might be the first time she’d talked about it to anyone. He’d learned when to listen and not interrupt.

‘You know that under the effects of intense heat, your brain expands?’ Petty said at last.

‘Yes, I think so.’ Cooper put down his glass. He had a feeling it was going to be worse than he’d imagined. Chocolate truffle cake was suddenly less appealing.

‘Well, a child’s skull is a lot weaker than an adult’s. The bones are very soft at first, you know. They showed us some photographs from this scene, where the young boy had died. The fire was so rapid and the temperature so high that when the child’s brain expanded, it burst the skull. The captions said skull failure and brain protrusionin a two-year-old fire victim. And I was thinking, if you came on a scene like that, your assumption would probably be that the child had died from a serious head injury before the fire.’

‘And that a fire had been started to conceal the evidence,’ said Cooper. ‘It happens.’

‘Right. But it would be a wrong assumption. Chances are, it might just have been the fire.’ Her voice dropped lower. ‘It might only have been skull failure and brain protrusion. Only that.’

Cooper heard the break in her voice, and let the silence settle. It was as if a bubble had formed around their table, insulating them from the rest of the wine bar. He felt he could almost reach out and touch that rare thing, the ability of two people to think the same thoughts and share the same emotions without having to speak them out loud.

Then Liz reached out for his hand. ‘You didn’t want dessert, did you, Ben?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Let’s pay the bill, then.’

Stella Searle looked away from the TV set in her bedroom towards the shower, where she could hear water running. Darren had bought her the TV himself. He’d do almost anything to keep her happy, except the one thing she really wanted.

‘Daz!’ she called. But she only heard him humming some tune to himself, like a cocky child, and she had to call him again. ‘Darren!’

‘What’s up?’

‘Come out here.’

‘I’m having a shower, darling.’

‘Come out here. There’s something on the telly you’ve got to see.’

‘It’ll wait. I won’t be a minute.’

‘No — now,’ she said, using the tone of voice she knew he’d recognize.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’

The water stopped, and after a moment he padded out into the bedroom with a towel wrapped round his middle, his hair wet and feet making damp marks on the floor.

‘What is it, Stell?’

She looked back at the screen, but the news-reader had moved on to another item, something about petrol prices.

‘It’s gone off now.’

‘Fuck’s sake, darling. If I don’t get finished in the shower, I’ll be late home. Fiona will throw a bloody fit.’

Stella took no notice of his mood, or his swearing. Darren was all mouth. She knew she had total control over him.

‘They were doing a bit about the woman who got shot in the village the other night.’

‘Oh, that. Yeah, I heard about it.’

He turned and began to head back towards the shower, clutching at the towel to keep it in place. His backside was too big, excess fat padding out his hips. Darren thought he was fit, but he spent too much time driving, or sitting around with his mates drinking beer.

‘It said the police are looking for a car. And a man that someone saw in the village that night.’

Darren hesitated with his hand on the door of the shower cubicle. ‘Good. They’ll get the bugger that did it, then. We can’t have blokes walking about shooting old women dead like that.’

‘She wasn’t all that old,’ said Stella. ‘Sixty-odd, they said. It’s nothing these days.’

‘If you say so.’