‘Yes.’
‘But Naomi Widdowson insisted in interview that Rawson’s death was an accident, didn’t she?’ said Cooper. ‘She said they just wanted to scare him, to pay him back for all the distress he’d caused to her, and scores of people like her.’
‘That might have been what Naomi thought,’ said Fry. ‘Her boyfriend Adrian Tarrant is quite a different matter. I knew I recognized him at the hunt meeting, when he was acting as a steward. Just the sort of person the hunting fraternity don’t need if they want to improve their image, Ben.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘And Deborah Rawson made quite a separate deal with him. She paid him three thousand pounds.’
‘Three thousand pounds? It’s not much, really.’
‘It is, if you think you’re going to get away with it. And Adrian Tarrant thought he would.’
‘Just as Patrick Rawson always did.’
‘I suppose so.’
Cooper thought back to the hunt saboteurs’ report of hearing the kill call on the morning of the hunt. Earlier, there had been the phone call from Naomi Widdowson to Patrick Rawson, the call that had brought him to his death. That was a kind of kill call in its own way. And there had been the call from Deborah Rawson to Adrian Tarrant, too.
‘The argument Mr Wakeley heard…’ said Cooper.
‘Yes?’
‘I was assuming he’d heard Naomi Widdowson shouting at Patrick Rawson, and perhaps Rawson arguing back. That doesn’t fit with the story, though, does it?’
‘Not quite,’ said Fry. ‘Naomi must certainly have shouted at him about Rosie. But Rawson didn’t stand there and argue with her. He ran.’
‘Yes. So the rest of the argument must have been between Naomi and Adrian, mustn’t it?’
Fry nodded. ‘Of course. She didn’t want Tarrant to go back to the hut, she was trying to make him come away with her. I think Naomi was telling the truth on this point — that she only wanted to give Patrick Rawson a scare. But Adrian had another job to do.’
‘He wasn’t much of a hit man, though. Too fond of unnecessary showiness — I mean, the business with the hunting horn and all that. The kill call.’
‘Well, he enjoyed the work too much,’ said Fry. ‘That was his problem. It doesn’t do to get emotionally involved.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
Then Cooper remembered David Headon’s almost casual reference to Attack Warning Red, the recognized alert to an imminent nuclear attack during the 1960s. Attack Warning Red? That would have been the kill call on a massive scale.
They had lunch at the Miners’ Arms, a pub boasting that it was old enough to be pre-plague. Fry ate bacon- wrapped chicken breast stuffed with leeks and mushrooms, while Cooper had the home-made venison and orange pie.
As they ate, Cooper tried to close his ears to the voice of a man at a nearby table, boasting to two women that he kept a loaded pistol on his bedside table, in case of burglars. ‘ If I caught a burglar in my house, I’d shoot him. It’s the way I was trained.’
‘I heard your cat died,’ said Fry, draining half a glass of the house white.
As small talk, it wasn’t a brilliant opening. Cooper looked at the rapidly disappearing wine and wondered if Fry could really be as nervous as she seemed, so unaccustomed to a purely social situation.
‘How did you hear that?’ asked Cooper, genuinely curious about her sources of information.
‘Oh, it was mentioned around the office,’ said Fry vaguely. ‘Becky Hurst said something, I think.’
Office gossip, then? He didn’t think she ever noticed it, let alone paid any attention to it.
‘Yes, it’s true. Though I’m not entirely sure he was mine. He kind of came with the flat, and adopted me.’
‘Shame, though.’
‘You’re not a cat person, are you?’ said Cooper. ‘I’m sure you can’t be.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well… no, you’re just not, Diane.’
Fry swallowed some more wine. ‘Can’t stand ’em,’ she admitted. ‘Aren’t you going to get a new one?’
‘I’m going to look this afternoon.’
‘From a sanctuary?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought it would be.’
Despite his best intentions, Cooper felt himself bridle at her tone. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Human or animal, it has to be a lost cause with you. You have to be able to ride in like a knight in shining armour and perform the noble rescue. It’s what you get off on. I’ve seen it often enough.’
Her accusation was so unfair that Cooper didn’t know what to say. How had she known that he would choose a sanctuary? He’d been thinking only the other day of Cats Protection, who had a centre somewhere near Ashbourne. But there was a sanctuary closer than that, just outside Edendale, and he’d decided to give them a try first. That wasn’t wrong, was it? Anyone would do the same, rather than leave all those animals abandoned in cages.
Fry put down her glass for a moment.
‘Can I ask you something?’
Cooper could feel the mood change, like a cold draught blowing through the bar. He almost looked round to see who’d left the door open.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Did you ever really understand why I came to Derbyshire from Birmingham?’
‘Well, there was your sister,’ said Cooper cautiously, remembering a particularly difficult period between them, and reluctant to open up any old wounds. ‘You thought she was living in this part of the world. Sheffield, right?’
‘Yes. And?’
Fry gazed at him challengingly, waiting for a reply. It made Cooper feel as though he was a suspect in an interview room, forced to fill that uncomfortable silence with some confession of his own.
‘Well, I heard you had a bad time in Birmingham,’ he said.
‘A bad time?’ Fry tossed back the rest of her wine and looked around for another. ‘What does that mean?’
‘There was the assault case.’
‘Oh, you heard about that? Who told you?’
Cooper shifted nervously. He recalled mentioning it himself, to Liz Petty.
‘I don’t know, Diane. It was a story that went around the office, not long after you arrived.’
‘I’d like to know who spread the story.’
‘I honestly don’t know. Are you saying it isn’t true?’
‘No, it’s quite true.’
‘I appreciate it’s something you might not want to talk about.’
Fry stared at her empty glass. For a moment, Cooper thought she was going to start talking to him about it, that she wanted to tell him about the rape that had blighted her career in the West Midlands and had followed her to Derbyshire, like a shadow.
But if the thought had crossed her mind, she decided against it. Cooper realized that she wasn’t going to say more. Though he’d barely touched his own drink, he fetched her another glass of wine, and after a while the conversation moved on.
‘Lies,’ said Fry. ‘Casual disregard for the truth. Why do people always feel the need to lie, even about the smallest things?’
‘It’s an occupational hazard in our business,’ said Cooper, watching her attack her full glass.
