The clouds had closed down on the horizon and settled on the high tops to the north, where visibility would be pretty well zero, so close that you would be lucky to get a glimpse of your own boots in the heather. Cooper held the fungus gingerly towards Fry. She barely glanced at it, as if used to his peculiarities now. But she wrinkled her nose and turned her face away. Then he threw the fungus into the heather and wiped his fingers on a tissue. He was right - her sense of smell was perfectly good enough to detect cigarette smoke.
‘Have you heard of Eden Valley Enquiries?’ he said. ‘A firm of second-rate enquiry agents? Divorces and process-serving, that sort of thing. I think they have an office in one of those small business centres on Meadow Road.’
‘That’s right. Discreet confidential enquiries. No questions asked. I rang them the other day.’
‘Yeah? Looking for a new job, are you? Thinking of joining the private detective business?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘No. I was thinking of trying to sell them some soffits.’
Fry stared at him. ‘Ben, have you completely flipped?’ ‘It was something we found at Maggie Crew’s place. It had the name “Eve” and a phone number. We thought it was some friend of hers. Only it wasn’t Eve, a person; it was EVE, in capitals. It stands for Eden Valley Enquiries.’
‘Yes? Is there a point?’
‘Well, there were some other details, a sort of journal.’ They had almost reached the Nine Virgins. The tape had gone now, and the public had been allowed back into the stone circle. Someone had laid a bunch of flowers against the base of one of the stones, where Jenny Weston had died.
Cooper took his notebook from his pocket. ‘Do you want to hear it?’ he said.
If it will make you feel better.’
It says: “Left place of residence in Grosvenor Avenue 21.10, travelled by car to Sheffield. Parked in multistorey car park in The Moor and proceeded on foot to railway arches near junction of Shrewsbury Road and Dixon Street.’ Cooper paused. ‘There’s a lot more. Do you want to hear it?’
‘No.’ ‘It goes into quite some detail, on two separate occasions. And it ends with an unfortunate incident involving a confrontation with one of their operatives.’
‘So Maggie had me followed.’
‘The name of the subject isn’t actually mentioned,’ Cooper pointed out.
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‘But why would she do that?’ Automatically, Cooper counted the stones. Some legends said that you could never count the Virgins, because they always moved before you got to the last one. But today there were definitely nine. Nine, plus the stone that stood away from the rest, on its own. The Fiddler. ‘It was how she traced Jenny Weston,’ he said. ‘EVE located Jenny’s home in Totley for her. Then they had an operative track Jenny’s movements - he was seen by at least two of the neighbours. He followed her, and recorded her habits. Unfortunately, Jenny made the mistake of going to the same place too often.’ ‘Here. Ringham Moor.’ Cooper nodded. ‘So Maggie knew exactly where she would be going that day, and she set off to meet her on the moor.’ ‘But surely it must have occurred to Eden Valley Enquiries after Jenny was killed ‘ He shrugged. ‘Discreet and confidential. No questions asked.’ ‘Jesus. I’d string them up and break every bone in their bodies.’ ‘You did a decent job on one of their operatives, by all accounts. For someone with an injured leg.’ Diane Fry recalled the memories that Maggie Crew had eventually produced for her tape. She had thought at the time they seemed confused, a mingling of more than one memory dredged from the depths of her mind. Now it occurred to her that Maggie might have been I
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producing them solely to please her interviewer. At the next meeting, perhaps, she would have reached the critical moment, a shared trauma that would have bonded them permanently. She would have told of the rape twenty years ago - the rape that had left her pregnant with a female child that she hadn’t wanted. Unlike Fry, Maggie’s beliefs hadn’t allowed her to take the abortion option. But Fry hadn’t let her reach that point. She hadn’t needed Maggie Crew any more, or so she had thought. ‘Diane,’ said Cooper, ‘what’s the secret of keeping your memories buried?’ Fry looked up. ‘Avoiding those triggers, I suppose. The ones that set off the memories. The only way is to avoid them.’ ‘Maybe.’ Fry studied him carefully. ‘Had you something particular in mind, Ben?’ ‘I’m going to move out of Bridge End Farm, I think.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘I need to get away from the place. There are too many reminders of the past for me to be comfortable there any more.’ ‘But your family are there.’ ‘I can visit them. But there comes a time when you have to be on your own. I think it’s come rather late in my case. Anyway, I don’t think Matt and Kate will be sorry to see me move out. They must think I’m in the way, but they’re too polite to say so.’ ‘Where will you go?’ For a fleeting moment, Fry had a picture of Ben
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Cooper living in one of the little flats in the house on Grosvenor Avenue, a flat next to her own. ‘Oh, I expect I’ll find somewhere.’ Fry nodded. The vision had passed instantly. Cooper just wouldn’t fit in among the peeling wallpaper and the grubby carpets. At present, there were no cattle in the fields at Ringham Edge Farm. The implement sheds had been emptied, the barns cleared, the milking parlour dismantled. Three days ago, the last traces of the work of generations had been laid out in the paddock behind the house and sold off at knock-down prices to the highest bidder. Farmers had come to pick over the pieces - not to buy anything, necessarily, but to see what fragments of a life were left when a man went the way that Warren Leach had gone, and to wonder whose turn it might be next. The two boys, Will and Dougie, had gone back to their mother, and Social Services had found them a new home in the suburbs of Derby. They might never live in the countryside again. Ben Cooper sensed Fry’s change of mood with some apprehension. He crouched to examine the flowers, which were covered in cellophane and had been tied to one of the stones with string. The writing on the card was faint, but he could see it was from Jenny Weston ‘s parents. Fry stood outside the circle and watched him. ‘So, Ben,’ she said, ‘if someone came along here after Maggie Crew and before Simon Bevington, who was it?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
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‘We always thought it must have been someone Jenny trusted, didn’t we?’ ‘Another woman seemed a possibility.’ ‘Or a Ranger.’ ‘Yes, Diane. But it wasn’t a Ranger.’ ‘Are we quite sure? Jenny let somebody get too close to her. She would recognize the Ranger’s jacket and feel secure. She would trust a Ranger.’ Cooper shook his head. ‘No.’ Fry seemed to have something squeezed up inside her that was causing her discomfort and had to be released. ‘You know when I was here,’ she said, ‘that night in the quarry with Calvin Lawrence and Simon Bevington? We’ll never be able to prove who all of those people were.’ ‘Not a hope.’ ‘But one of them was familiar. The one who attacked me. For a moment, I thought I knew who that was. But unlike you, Ben, I don’t believe in relying on feelings, only on hard evidence. It makes life a lot simpler, sometimes.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ said Cooper. Fry hesitated. Then, uncharacteristically, she seemed to wander off at a tangent again ‘The person who approached Jenny Weston might have been a Ranger, because she would trust him…’ ‘But it wasn’t a Ranger,’ repeated Cooper… and she would trust a police officer too,’ said Fry. Cooper stared at her. ‘If the police officer was in uniform, of course,’ he said. But as he said it, he knew it sounded more like a question than a statement.
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