‘I’m going down anyway,’ said Cooper. ‘You can wait here if you like.’
He got out of the car, pulling a sturdy torch from the glove compartment.
‘We can’t do this.’
‘I can,’ said Cooper. ‘You’ll obviously have to go by the book, won’t you?’
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He climbed over the wall and began to walk into the wood, finding the start of a narrow path that had been invisible from the road.
‘Hold on, for God’s sake,’ said Fry, slamming her door.
He smiled and keyed the electronic locks.
‘Can’t be too careful.’
They set off close together, sharing the light of the torch. Cooper had always felt a part of the world he worked in, especially when he was out working in the open. But Diane Fry, he thought, would be for ever a stranger to it. He was alert for any sounds in the wood, but she seemed completely absorbed in herself, as if the darkness meant not only that she couldn’t see, but also that she could neither hear nor smell what was around her, nor even feel the nature of the ground underfoot. Cooper was listening hard. Any countryman knew that the sounds that animals made could tell you whether there was a human presence in the area.
At that moment, he could hear the echo of a faint screech deep in the wood, a fleeting sound like the scratching of a nail on glass, or chalk across a blackboard, but with a plaintive falling note at the end.
‘Little owl.’
‘Eh?’ said Fry.
‘Little owl.’
‘What are you talking about? Is it Cowboys and Indians? You Big Chief Little Owl, me squaw?’
‘I’m talking about the bird. Can’t you hear it?’
‘No.’
They both listened for a moment.
‘It’s gone now,’ said Cooper.
Fry seemed genuinely reluctant to go into the woods in the dark. He was surprised by her behaviour. Afraid of the dark? Surely not Diane Fry; not Macho Woman.
‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘We could leave it until tomorrow, if you like. I could suggest it at the morning briefing, and see if anyone can be bothered to put out an action for it. We’re not getting overtime for this,
176
after all. It doesn’t make good business sense, does it? If you
want to look at it like that.’
‘Since we’re here, let’s just do it, then we can go home.’ ‘On the other hand, if he is down there, he’ll probably have
moved on somewhere else by tomorrow.’ ‘Can you just shut up and get on with it?’
Diane shee found the darkness disturbing. The deeper they moved
J O I J
into the wood, the more she wished that she had brought a torch
O
of her own, that she had refused to go along with the idea, that
‘ O O ‘
she had stayed in the car after all. Or better still, that she had never stupidly agreed to play squash with a jerk like Ben Cooper. She had known it had been a mistake from the start. She should never have let herself get involved, not even for one evening. And now it had ended up like this. With a stupid escapade that she could see no way of getting herself out of.
In front of her. Cooper was walking with an exaggerated
‘ r o oo
carefulness, lifting his feet high in front of him before placing them cautiously back on the ground. He pointed the torch downwards, shielding its light with his hand so that it would not be visible in the distance. At one point he stopped to rest against a tree. When he straightened up again, Fry felt him stagger as if he was drunk. She grabbed his arm to support him, but felt no resistance in his muscles. Peering into his face
‘ o
by the dim light, she saw that his cheeks were drawn, and his eyelids were heavy.
‘You’re exhausted,’ she said. ‘You can’t go on with this. We’ll have to turn back.’
‘Not now,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ll be all right.’
He shook himself vigorously and they set off again. Soon, a darker area of blackness began to form up ahead. Cooper switched off the torch and signalled her closer so that he could whisper into her ear. His breath felt warm on her cheek, which was starting to feel a faint chill in the night air.
‘That’s the hut. You stay here while I take a look through the window at the side there. Don’t make a sound.’
