‘No. I don’t know where he is,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’s about the farm somewhere?’ ‘Perhaps he is.’
She had kept Cooper standing in the yard, advancing from her doorstep so that he had to retreat to a point where he couldn’t see into the house. He noted her
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defensiveness without surprise. Many of these small hill farmers were used to making do on little money, especially when they had children to raise. But when things became too bad, it was often the women on whom the burden fell; the women were the first to suffer the internal fractures that could tear apart their families and their lives. They always tried to hide it. But there were inadvertent signs - little giveaways that you could learn to see, with practice.
‘I noticed the Land Rover wasn’t in the yard,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s gone out, then.’
‘Do you know where, Mrs Leach?’
She shrugged. ‘He doesn’t always tell me where he’s going. Why should he?’
Now Cooper registered the note of defiance, and assessed the woman more carefully. Although her clothes were old, they were clean and neatly pressed. Her hair, streaking to grey, had not seen a hairdresser for some time, but it was brushed and tied neatly back. Cooper realized she had even applied a touch of make-up this morning. Her lips showed two unsteady lines of red, her cheeks traces of powder.
‘If you see your husband, please tell him we’d like to speak to him again,’ he said.
Then Mrs Leach smiled. It was a strangely elated smile, escaping through lips that trembled slightly. Cooper wondered whether she was on the verge of hysteria, a step away from being tipped over the edge. He wanted to stay for a while and talk to her, to tell her to seek medical advice before it was too late. He wanted to tell her that those were the saddest words in
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the language: ‘too late’. But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t his job.
‘If I see him,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, I’ll tell him if I see him.’
‘And how are the boys?’
She looked surprised, almost unnerved, as if someone had just delivered bad news.
‘What?’ ‘Will and Dougie, is that their names? I saw them the other day. A couple of grand lads.’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Leach took a handkerchief from her pocket and began to twist it as she watched Cooper’s face suspiciously.
‘They were tending to a fine-looking calf. They said her name was Doll.’
‘They showed her at Bakewell.’ ‘And won a prize, too.’
‘They were that pleased,’ she said. Her voice rose suddenly on the last word, as if she had lost control of her pitch. She screwed up the handkerchief and began to dab at her lips.
‘I’m sure you must be very proud of them.’ Mrs Leach nodded.
‘I suppose they’re at school just now,’ said Cooper. She made an indecipherable noise through the handkerchief that might have been agreement.
‘How old are they?’ ‘Six and nine - no, ten.’
‘Both still at the primary school in Cargreave, then,’ he said.
She nodded again.
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‘I suppose Will is going to be off to secondary school next year. Do they go to Matlock or Bakewell from here?’
‘I forget.’
Cooper looked back to where Diane Fry waited impatiently at the gate, eyeing the muck in the yard with distaste. It was only the mud left by the hooves of the cows as they passed through to the milking parlour from the wet fields. But it should have been cleaned up by now. Ringham Edge had the look of a well-maintained farm in other ways - the house and the buildings were in good condition, the tractor he could see in the shed was almost new. But there was the burnt-out pick-up standing abandoned by the shed, and the yard hadn’t been washed clean of mud for days.
‘Is everything all right, Mrs Leach? No problems?’ Yvonne Leach laughed, and then looked at him with astonishment. ‘What is it you want?’ she said.
‘We’re trying to trace the movements of the woman who was killed on the moor yesterday. We think she might have come this way.’
‘Oh?’ She ran her hand across her mouth again, and kept it there for a moment. To hide an inappropriate smile or some other expression; Cooper couldn’t tell. The woman’s eyes certainly weren’t smiling. He began to describe Jenny Weston. He showed Mrs Leach the photo. She took it in her hand and looked at it for a long time. When she handed it back, there was a smear of lipstick on the edge of the print.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I never saw her.’
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‘Did you see anybody else come by this way? Yesterday afternoon?’
‘People are always coming by. It’s a right of way, the track there. We take no notice of them, as long as they don’t bother us.’
‘It must have been fairly quiet yesterday, I suppose. Not many walkers.’
‘Yes. Quiet.’
‘I just thought, if it was so quiet, you might have noticed somebody more.’
Yvonne Leach seemed to be losing interest, or was thinking about something else. ‘There was the other one, too. A few weeks ago.’
‘Yes. She was attacked near the Cat Stones, we think. Up by the tower somewhere.’
