broke through the surface to form steps in the steeper places. There were oaks and birches clinging to the slopes on either side, with swathes of dense bracken clustering round their trunks. A tumble of huge rocks lay half hidden among
O J O
the bracken, like the overgrown ruins of a Stone Age temple. Birds skittered away among the undergrowth, chattering their
44
alarm calls, and there was the constant background hiss of a fast-running stream.
‘Ave, about here,’ said Harrv.
‘You’re sure?’
“I reckon.’
Ben Cooper didn’t quite know what to make of Harry Dickinson. Usually he could read some emotion in people he came into contact with in this sort of job. They were often upset, frightened, angry or even completely knocked for six by shock and distress. These were the ones for whom violent crime was something new and horrific that had never touched their lives before. Sometimes there were those who were nervous, or became unreasonably aggressive. Those were interesting reactions, too, often the first signs of guilt. He had learned to pick up those signs in the people he dealt with. He thought of it as a good detective’s instinct.
Harry Dickinson, though, had showed no emotion of any kind, not when he had been in the cottage with his wife and granddaughter, and not now when he stood with Cooper at the spot where he and his dog had found the bloodstained trainer.
During the walk down the path to the foot of Raven’s Side, Harry had marched ahead, silent and stiff, his back pulled straight, his arms swinging in a steady rhythm. He had not spoken a word since they had left the cottage, communicating only with a slight tilt of the head when they reached a turning in the path. It was as if the old man was shut up tight in a body that had turned to wood. Cooper would have liked to have got in front of him, to try to read something in the old man’s eves.
- O J
‘You do realize that Laura Vernon might be lying nearby badly
o J o J J
injured, Mr Dickinson?’
‘Yes.’ ‘Or even dead?’
Harry met Cooper’s eyes. What was the expression that passed across them so fleetingly? Amusement? No, mockery. An impatience with such a waste of words.
‘I’m not daft. I know what’s what.’
‘It’s vital that we know the exact spot you found the trainer, Mr Dickinson.’
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Harry spat into the grass, narrowed his eyes against the low sun, like an Indian picking up a trail. He pointed the peak of his cap to the right.
‘Down there? Near the stream?’
‘Jess runs down there, by the water,’ said Harry.
‘What’s past those rocks?’
‘A wild bit, all overgrown. There’s rabbits and such in
‘ o
there.’
‘Is that where the trainer came from?’ Harry shrugged. ‘Take a look for yourself, lad.’ Cooper walked over to the outcrop of rocks. Only their tops protruded from the grass, and their jagged shapes looked slippery and treacherous. It was not a place he would choose to walk over, given the choice of easier walking that lay in other directions. He
o o J
could see that sheep must graze here, by the shortness of the coarse grass. Between the rocks, narrow tracks had been worn, and there were ancient black pellets drying on the ground.
Trying to stick to the rocks to avoid confusing any traces of footprints, Cooper clambered over into the thick undergrowth. The stream rushed over the rocks a few feet to his right, running low just here below a stretch of smooth, grassy bank. It looked like an ideal spot for two people to spend an afternoon, secluded and undisturbed.
He looked back over his shoulder. Harry Dickinson had not followed him. He stood on a flat section of rock, poised as if guarding the path, apparently oblivious to what was going on around him. His fist clenched occasionally, as if he felt that he ought to have his dog lead in his hand. He looked completely calm.
Cooper moved further into the undergrowth, his clothes brushing against the bracken and catching on the straggling tendrils of brambles. Two or three wasps, disturbed by his passage, hovered round his head, making irritating darts at his face and evading his futile slaps at the air. The trees began to close over him again, creating a dark cave filled with summer flies.
o ‘ O
Ahead and about thirty feet below, just across the stream, he could make out a wide footpath marked with small stones and with wooden ledges built into the ground as steps. It
46
was almost a motorway of a footpath, cleared of vegetation, well-used and worn by many feet. Cooper realized that he had almost reached the Eden Vallev Trail, the path that connected to the long-distance Pennine Way a little to the north. It was a favourite with ramblers, who passed this way in their thousands in die summer.
But the spot where he stood was as remote and isolated from life on the path down there as if it had been on top of Mam For itself. A passing walker would not have been able to see Cooper up there among the bracken, even
