‘Thanks for telling me, Helen,’ he said, knowing it sounded totally inadequate.
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‘As a matter of fact, it helps to tell somebody. And you’re not difficult to talk to, Ben.’
‘I’m glad.’
She paused. ‘Ben —’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you go off duty sometime?’
‘Of course. Tonight.’ He hesitated, a fateful hesitation. ‘But - well, I’ve got something that I have to do.’ ‘I see.’
He hadn’t forgotten his promise to Diane Fry, and he hated to let people down. But there were times when, no matter what you did, no matter how you tried, there was always someone that you were letting down. And it was usually yourself.
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23
1 he Way of the Eagle Martial Arts Centre was tucked away
J O J
in the basement of a former textile warehouse in Stone Bottom, at the end of Bargate. The ground floor of the warehouse was occupied by a computer software company, and above it, on three more floors, were craft workshops, creative designers, a small-scale publisher of countryside books and an employment agency. The steps down to the dojo were always bathed in the smell of freshly baked bread from the ventilators in the back wall of the baker’s in Hollowgate.
Diane Fry followed Ben Cooper’s Toyota as it turned off Bargate and bounced down the carefully relaid stone setts between a corner pub and three-storey terraced houses whose front doors were reached by short flights of steps lined with iron railings. On the left, a steep alley ran back up towards the Market Square and Edendale’s main shopping streets.
The daytime car park for the craftspeople and office workers was closed by a barrier, but a small patch of derelict land had been partially cleared next to the old warehouse. They parked their cars in the middle of an area of mud-filled potholes fringed by broken bricks and shoulder-high thistles. There were several other vehicles there already, and the sound of dull thumps and hoarse screams filtered through the steel grilles of windows set near ground level.
The buildings were clustered so close together in Stone Bottom that they seemed grotesquely out of proportion from the ground as they leaned towards each other, dark and shadowy against the sky, set with long, blank rows of tiny windows. The slamming of their car doors echoed loudly against the walls and reverberated down the stone setts to the narrow bridge over the
o
River Eden.
Fry collected her sports bag from her boot and joined Cooper at the door. Though the baker’s had stopped work for the evening, they could still smell the warm, yeasty scent of the
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bread lingering around the basement steps and in the dark corners between the buildings.
‘That’s making me feel hungry. I haven’t had anything since lunchtime, and I only managed to grab a sandwich between
‘ > o o
interviews.’
Cooper shrugged. He had been at the hospital at lunchtime and he hadn’t eaten any lunch at all. In fact, he hadn’t even thought about food. The hunger that was gnawing at his bcllv now wasn’t caused by the smell of baking, but by the need to prove that there was something he could do right. Something he could do better than Diane Fry.
‘What have you been doing todav then, Diane?’
J & j ‘
‘I interviewed Charlotte Vernon this morning. You wouldn’t believe that woman, Ben. She tried to put on an act for me. Wanted me to believe that she was some sort of hard-faced, sex-mad bitch who didn’t care about anything, let alone her daughter. Anybody could have seen through it. The woman is broken up inside. But why would someone put on an act like that?’
He paused, regarding Fry curiously. ‘I could think of several reasons.’
‘Such as?’
‘She may feel she has to play the part that’s expected of her. People do that all the time. They try to live up to an image they’ve created for themselves, or meet the expectations that other people have of them, as if they have no real personality of their own. Or she may have been diverting your attention from something else. On the other hand, it could have been a
o ‘
double-bluff. She may have been hiding the truth by pushing it in your face so hard that you would refuse to accept it.’
‘Amazing, Ben. You make people sound really complicated. In my experience, their motivations are usually very simple and boring.’
‘Motivations like ambition and greed? The old favourites? They can certainly make people ruthless and selfish, can’t they?’
Fry bridled at his tone of voice, though she didn’t know what he was getting at. ‘And sex, of course,’ she said.
‘Oh yes, let’s not forget sex.’ Cooper collected two locker
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