Fry nodded. ‘My sister called me this week.’
Cooper froze. Not only at the unexpected turn of the conversation, but at Fry’s sudden change of tone. Just when he thought she was about to thaw a little, she produced a knife to stab into his guts.
‘Angie?’ he said, knowing that he sounded completely feeble.
‘I don’t have any other sisters.’
‘Is she…?’ Cooper didn’t know what he meant to ask.
‘Much the same as the last time you talked to her,’ said Fry. ‘Probably much the same as the first time, too.’
‘Diane, I know we never talked about that — ’
‘You’re damn right we didn’t.’
‘Is there anything I can say that would help?’
‘You can tell me why you went to all that trouble to find my sister and plot with her behind my back. It’s something you should have explained to me a long time ago, Ben. A long time.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Cooper.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t find her. She found me.’
He was starting to feel a bit more confident now. None of it had been his fault, really. He knew that. But Diane was right — he’d never explained it to her. He’d been afraid to.
Fry stared at him. ‘Are you saying it was all Angie’s idea?’
‘Yes.’
That didn’t make her look any happier. Cooper searched for the right words to use that would get him past this moment. But Fry was too impatient, and she couldn’t wait for him to make his mind up.
‘More lies,’ she said. ‘It gets depressing.’
‘Diane — ’
She held up a hand. ‘No, that’s enough. I shouldn’t have asked. I ought to have known better.’
There was an awkward silence. Cooper fidgeted, wishing for an excuse to get up and move away. He exchanged glances with the people at the other table, who’d been staring at Fry. They turned away in embarrassment.
To his immense relief, it was Fry who broke the silence. She seemed to have two distinct halves to her brain, the way she could switch from one to the other so easily. But there was no doubt about it, thought Cooper — the professional part of her brain was the one that assumed dominance most easily.
‘Lies,’ she said again, and took a long breath, as if inhaling the fumes from her wine. ‘You know, the first person to deceive us in the Rawson enquiry was the manager at Le Chien Noir,’ she said.
‘How is that?’ said Cooper, eager to encourage this time.
‘He was so vague about the man that Patrick Rawson was having dinner with that Monday night. He couldn’t give a completely misleading description, in case we asked anyone else and their version contradicted his. So he was deliberately vague. He knew perfectly well who the other man was — Maurice Gains, Rawson’s partner in R amp; G Enterprises.’
‘Oh. They were trying to find restaurants to serve their horse meat, weren’t they?’
‘Of course,’ said Fry. She took another long gulp of her drink. ‘But they already had wind of the trichinosis outbreak. The restaurant must have been desperate to avoid any suggestion they were serving horse meat. Reputation is everything in that business. Neil Connelly was already trying to distance Le Chien Noir from the bad publicity.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Suggest that Environmental Health pay a visit to Le Chien Noir.’
Cooper noticed that she was having a bit of difficulty saying the name of the restaurant. The third time it had definitely come out wrong.
‘Diane, are you all right?’
‘Why does everyone keep asking me if I’m all right?’
‘Well… I don’t know why everyone else does,’ said Cooper. ‘But I just noticed you seemed to be drinking quite fast. For a lunchtime, anyway. I didn’t know you were a day-time drinker.’
‘I’m not.’
‘OK.’
‘Except in exceptional circumstances.’
Cooper laughed uneasily. ‘You almost managed to say that without slurring.’
‘I don’t slur. I’ve never slurred in my life. I’m a positively slur-free zone.’
Overwhelmed with relief that the moment had passed, Cooper began to feel giddy with the idea that had come into his head.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I think we should go for a walk. A bit of fresh air will do us good. Did you bring your boots?’
‘It’s raining,’ protested Fry.
‘No, it’s stopped. It’s nice and fresh out there.’
38
They crossed the road at Middleton Dale, then walked up through the Tarmac site at Darlton Quarry, its sides terraced like a huge amphitheatre. Excavators were loading dumper trucks in the bottom of the quarry. A hydraulic drill probed at the rubble, splitting the larger stones. Nearer by, a giant shovel sculpted the edges of the worked-out areas.
Black Harry Lane was marked with wooden sign posts etched with horseshoe symbols. A bridlepath, then. Fields would be separated by gates, not stiles. But Cooper could see that this wouldn’t be easy going for a horse. One section of bridleway was so split and crevassed that it looked as though it had been involved in the same earthquake that had left those giant gashes on Longstone Edge.
It struck Cooper that Naomi Widdowson and her boyfriend had been almost a modern equivalent to Black Harry as they waylaid the unsuspecting Patrick Rawson, though the actual robbery had been left to Sean Crabbe.
Along the edge of the lane were a few skeletal hawthorn trees shattered by the wind, their branches broken, their buds blotched with leprous patches of lichen. They passed a dried-up watering hole, where sheep had stepped into the mud in search of the last inch of water. The concrete lining must have cracked, so that no amount of rain would ever fill it up again.
‘Deborah Rawson says she believed her husband was having an affair,’ said Fry, ‘and that might be true. But I think Patrick Rawson did something quite unforgivable in Deborah’s eyes, and it wasn’t to do with another woman.’
‘What?’
‘He proved that Erin Lacey was right about him. At heart, he was just a dodgy Irish horse dealer. That must have been the killer for Deborah Rawson.’
‘What — the fact that he’d gone back to horse dealing when she thought he was becoming a respectable businessman? Or the fact that Erin Lacey had been proved right?’
Fry nodded. ‘Both. There was certainly no love lost between those two women. So it was a double whammy. Can’t you just hear Mrs Lacey’s reaction?’
‘“ Blood will out ” — that sort of thing.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So if he hadn’t been tempted by the call that Naomi Widdowson made…’
‘He might still be alive now. Yes, that was what sealed his fate, I’m sure of it.’
‘But Deborah would rather let people think that he was having an affair, betraying her with another woman.’
‘Image,’ said Fry breathlessly. ‘It’s all about image.’
