Fry tried to wipe the blood away from her eye with her hand, but it trickled down her jawline and on to her neck. Mentally, she had been prepared for it. But physically, the sudden laying open of the skin still jolted her body, and caused a shock to the nervous system
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that twisted her stomach and drained the strength from her limbs.
Ben Cooper had reached the fatstock sale ring. He stopped at the end of the passageway, with the high steel bars of the ring between him and the two women. ‘Armed police!’ he shouted. ‘Drop the knife!’
Both the women turned towards him, startled. Then Cooper saw Fry fall as her leg gave way. She hit the concrete, and her baton dropped out of her hand, rolling under the seats at the edge of the ring.
Diane Fry could hear the panic in Cooper’s voice. Maggie looked towards Cooper and met his eye, defiant. It was then that Fry recognized something in Maggie’s face. It was the most dangerous look of all -the look of somebody whose life was already over. If you had lost everything that you ever cared about, it didn’t matter what else you did. It was all irrelevant. This was the way Maggie wanted it to go. She would not drop the knife - she wanted someone to shoot her. ‘Armed police! Drop the knife! Now!’
With a great effort, Fry hoisted herself up on her left hand and kicked Maggie’s feet from under her with her good leg. Their limbs tangled together, and they both went tumbling down the tiers of seats.
The two women lay in the sawdust, clutching each other like lovers. They sweated and gasped as they stared into each other’s eyes. Now she was so close, Fry could smell the cigarette smoke in Maggie’s hair, no longer masked by the perfume. She could picture the
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ashtray on Maggie’s desk, alongside the telephone and the letter opener, the only objects that had been important enough to earn space on that pristine surface. And Maggie Crew never had visitors to her apartment - so whose was the cigarette ash? It was a question Fry had never thought to ask.
Other armed officers had joined Cooper outside the ring. They shouted more warnings. But they couldn’t fire now. They had no clear target - the women were too closely entwined.
‘This was how you felt, that night at the Cat Stones,’ said Fry. ‘I know you, Maggie.’
Their faces were pressed against each other, Fry’s mouth touching Maggie’s disfigured cheek. But now she didn’t flinch away from the scars. Their breath mingled, and Fry felt their hearts beat hard against each other.
‘You’re going to have to give me the knife or kill me, Maggie.’
Maggie’s hand moved, and Fry felt the touch of the steel blade, sharp and cold. Maggie’s grip on her neck tightened.
It was a long moment, frightening yet exquisite, the feel of this person in her arms. Fry closed her eyes, unable to do anything to protect herself, or to prevent what might happen. She was waiting. Waiting for the knife to cut her again; waiting for it to enter her body.
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37
Derwent Court still had much of its original Victorian guttering. The increasingly blustery winds that battered around Matlock had swirled heaps of wet leaves into the iron channels and downspouts, and now the rain was spilling over and cascading down the front of the building. Ben Cooper had to dodge a waterfall near the front door, wondering whether this was part of the water treatment that the Victorians had once flocked to the hydro to enjoy.
When Cooper joined the team in Maggie Crew’s apartment, they had already emptied her desk, and papers littered the surface. DI Hitchens was working his way through them, and when he saw Cooper he offered him a heap.
‘We found a rucksack back there in one of the bedrooms with Ros Daniels’ clothes and a few belongings in. She was travelling light, by the looks of it.’
Cooper began to look through some of the papers. Many of them were bills, bank statements, insurance policies, all carefully organized and filed. There were law books, a copy of Maggie’s partnership agreement, an address book packed with names. Who were all the
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people in the address book if Maggie Crew had been so alone? He turned over some leaflets about Hammond Hall, and showed Hitchens what he found underneath. ‘This looks like a diary of some kind,’ he said. ‘Or a journal.’ ‘Is it Crew’s diary? We haven’t found one yet.’ ‘No. It’s just some times and places, almost an itinerary. It’s from somebody called Eve. Who’s Eve?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Cooper stopped and stared at the page. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Grosvenor Avenue, Edendale. But that’s ‘ ,Mm?, ‘So who’s Eve?’ repeated Cooper. ‘No idea. A friend of hers?’ ‘There’s a phone number, anyway. It’s a local number.’ ‘Try it then,’ said Hitchens. Cooper looked uncertain. What he had read had thrown him. It wasn’t what he had been expecting. ‘What do I say?’ ‘You can think of something, Cooper. Just ask for Eve and play it by ear.’ Still he hesitated, reading and rereading the bit about Grosvenor Avenue. ‘Shall I, sir?’ ‘Go ahead.’ Cooper dialled. ‘I’ll tell her I’m selling something. Nobody thinks there’s anything unusual about that.’ ‘That’s a good idea. So what are you selling?’ said Hitchens as the phone began to ring. ‘Soffits.’ ‘What the hell are soffits?’
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‘Exactly. Nobody knows. You can tell them any old rubbish.’ Then the ringing stopped, and a voice answered. But Cooper was speechless. He seemed to have forgotten he was a salesperson. His opening line had gone right out of his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Wrong number.’ And he put the phone down. ‘Was it?’ said Hitchens. ‘What?’ ‘A wrong number?’ ‘Not at all. Very much the right number, I think.’ ‘You didn’t try to sell them any soffits.’ ‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘They didn’t need any.’ Maggie Crew seemed almost at home in the interview room. Its sparseness suited her. She was able to live with her own thoughts, staring at a blank wall as she tried to recapture the elusive memories. Ben Cooper listened, fascinated, as she talked about the triggers that had achieved what nothing else could do. ‘It was the sounds and the smells that suddenly brought it back to me,’ she said. ‘You could have sent people to talk to me endlessly and you would never have achieved that. The voices, the way the men smelled of animals. And there were dogs barking somewhere, but I couldn’t see them…’ Maggie shuddered. ‘And then somebody screamed. One of the animal rights women.’ ‘And you’d just had it confirmed that Rosalind Daniels was dead,’ said DCI Tailby.
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She nodded. ‘It was like something physical hitting me. The memories poured over me. It was as if I was existing in two places at once, at two different moments. The sounds and the smells connected them. And I knew what had happened to Ros.’
Maggie put her hands on the table and looked at them. Her long fingers were very still, her nails blunt and pale.
‘Ros had decided to trace me, you know,’ she said. After all that time, my daughter decided to trace me. They allow adopted children to get access to information on their real parents, but not the other way round. It’s one of the provisions of the Adoption Rules. I don’t know what she hoped to achieve by it.’ Maggie paused and let out her breath. ‘Yes, I do. She wanted to get whatever she could from me. Money. A convenient place to stay.’
