Fry watched, feeling suddenly like a spare part, as Alicia Forbes looked Cooper up and down. She’d experienced this moment so often.
‘Do you have any animals yourself?’ she asked him.
‘Just a cat,’ he admitted, patting the horse’s neck.
‘Oh.’ Then she looked at his hand. ‘And you’re not wearing a wedding ring.’
‘No.’
‘I just wondered — I know not all men wear them, even when they’re married.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘So… are you? Married?’
‘No.’
‘You must be, what… thirty by now? Isn’t it time to settle down?’
‘Well, it’s not quite so simple.’
‘Mmm. I suppose not. Still — a single man, living alone with a cat. It could give the wrong impression.’
Just then, a powerful odour filled the yard. Not just the pervasive background smell, but something much more pungent and immediate.
‘Diane, watch out,’ said Cooper.
But he was too late. Fry felt the soft impact of warm, steaming lumps of fresh horse manure splattering on to her trousers and covering her shoes. For a second, she was so shocked that she couldn’t move. And the plops just kept coming. How did one animal manage to produce so much at one go?
As if by magic, Mrs Forbes herself had re-appeared to witness the moment.
‘Oh, I’m so terribly sorry,’ she said. ‘It appears you were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘These hunting people,’ said Fry angrily as she got back into the Peugeot. ‘Honestly, talking to them is like flogging a dead — ’
She stopped, realizing the stupidity of what she’d been about to say. As she started up the engine, Cooper got into the passenger seat. Fastening his seat belt, he wafted a hand in an exaggerated gesture.
‘Diane,’ he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind if I open the window? Only, it’s a bit — ’
‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘I know.’
Back at the office, Cooper found a place to hang his damp coat and fetched himself a coffee from the vending machine. Hardly coffee, really — but it was hot.
He stood for a moment watching Irvine and Hurst busy at work in the CID room. He was remembering again his first ever visit to Eyam, with the school party. He recalled that he’d brought back a souvenir from the village museum. Cooper smiled when he pictured it. His mother had hated the thing, and didn’t even want it in the house. She paid no attention to his explanation. Eyam was most famous as the Plague Village, right? So what else would you choose as a suitable souvenir to commemorate the Black Death? It was obvious, really. A black, plastic rat, with red eyes and a long, scaly tail.
The young Cooper had thought it was a fine example of Rattus rattus, the Black Rat — now one of the rarest mammals in the UK, thanks to its more successful cousin, the brown rat. The souvenir rat even came with its own information leaflet, explaining that this was the little beast that had spread from Asia to Europe in the Middle Ages, bringing its little gift of the bubonic plague. In dark corners of barns and warehouses it could be active at all hours, and ate almost anything it could find, its family groups organized on a hierarchical basis, dominated by one strong individual. They carried not only the plague, but typhus, rabies, salmonella, hantavirus, Weil’s disease… oh, and trichinosis, the pork roundworm. Thank God the natural mortality rate of rats was ninety per cent.
Cooper recalled very clearly standing outside the Plague Cottage that first time, reading the names of the dead on the plaque. It was all very well for people like Diane Fry to scoff at Eyam’s fame as the Plague Village, to laugh at the idea of souvenir rats and tableaux of people in night shirts with their necks covered in bubos. But for him, there was one fact which had made the whole story different, and much more personal. According to the well-documented history of Eyam’s plague year, the very first family to fall victim to the Black Death had been Coopers.
Fry had been only a few minutes late for her appointment to see Detective Superintendent Branagh. Yet when she entered the superintendent’s office, she felt a bit like the naughty child sent to see the head teacher for breaking wind in class.
The superintendent’s office was on the upper floor of Divisional HQ, looking down on Gate C and the back of the East Stand at Edendale Football Club. That view seemed to have become a status symbol among the senior management team. It was also one of the few offices with air conditioning, but it wasn’t in use today, and the room was a bit too warm. Branagh sniffed as she entered, like a disapproving matron.
After her visit to Mrs Forbes this afternoon, the first thing that struck Fry as she sat down was that Superintendent Branagh would make a good Master of the Hounds. She had a sudden image of Branagh, whip in hand, boots polished, riding britches specially tailored to accommodate her hips. The perfect companion for Lord Somebody or Other, whose portrait was in the National Gallery.
The superintendent flicked a file open impatiently, with no time to spare for the social niceties, making it plain that Fry had kept her waiting.
‘As you know, DS Fry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been reviewing the files of all CID staff in this division. Some of the Personal Development Reviews make interesting reading. Very interesting.’
‘I’m sure they’ve all been done properly, ma’am.’
‘Indeed. I’ll be talking to you about your team in due course. But, in the first instance, I’ve been looking at your record, and your case histories, DS Fry,’ she said. ‘Would you accept that there have been some weaknesses in certain areas of your development during your time with E Division?’
‘Well… I suppose I still have some experience to gain in a supervisory role.’
Branagh was watching her, waiting for more. But Fry wasn’t about to give it to her. Why hand her superintendent ammunition by criticizing her own performance? It was an old managerial trick.
‘Well, the fact is,’ said Branagh, ‘that you haven’t really been getting results. At least, not the sort of results I would have hoped for from you, if I’d been here during the past couple of years. Would you agree with that assessment, DS Fry?’
No choice here. If Fry denied it, she would be forced to quote examples to support her argument. And right now, nothing came to mind.
‘I suppose so, ma’am.’
Branagh nodded. ‘I’m glad you agree. It’s a shame, because your early reports suggest that you were once considered a potential high-flier.’
Fry’s heart gave a lurch of shock. That was a real punch below the belt. All this time, she’d been considering herself a high-flier, on the surface at least. Deep down, she must have known that she wasn’t, not any more. Still a Detective Sergeant at the age of thirty? For heaven’s sake. It must have been obvious to everyone around her that she’d lost ground. She had been too busy with other concerns, taken up by so many distractions that she hadn’t been focusing on the job. Not the way she should have done.
When had it all started to go wrong? Not when she first transferred to Derbyshire. Well, not immediately, anyway. She’d been given the promotion almost straight away. But maybe that had been on the strength of her previous record. Somewhere, somehow, she had then taken her eye off the ball, had let her career get stagnant. She’d been drifting with the current, when she ought to have been swimming for land.
Damn it, Branagh was right. DS Diane Fry’s career had been ruined. In this stinking backwater, she had become soft and lazy. She’d gone native. Jesus, if she wasn’t careful, she could even end up like Ben Cooper.
Detective Superintendent Branagh was still talking, listing entries from her Personal Development Reviews. Targets and assessments, the occasions when guidance had been given, one instance when words of advice had been issued following a complaint of rudeness from a member of the public.
But Fry wasn’t really listening. She was recalling her first week on the job in Derbyshire, meeting her DI, and Hitchens asking her what she was aiming to achieve. ‘ I’m good at my job,’ she’d said. ‘ I’ll be looking for promotion. That’s what’s important to me.’
