part of the quarry, afraid that they might never get back up again, or that their wheels might slip off the edge.
But on the rock-spattered floor in the deepest part of the quarry stood a van. Whoever had driven it here had managed to find a flat area where the wagons had once been loaded with stone. The angle of the quarry walls hid the spot completely from the road fifty yards away. Unless you were looking, you would never find it.
‘It’s an old VW Transporter,’ said Cooper. ‘Long wheelbase version. And over twenty years old, if you can believe the registration plates. But look at the state of the tyres. This thing hasn’t moved in a good while.’
Fry pulled out her personal radio. ‘I’ll call in and get them to do a check on that number. It’s probably stolen.’ Cooper walked round the van carefully. As well as
the back doors, there was a side loading door on the nearside. But the windows at the back had been painted over, in the way that market traders did to screen their goods from prying eyes. Cooper reached the driver’s door and peered into the cab. The seats were worn and split, and a large cobweb glistened across the corner between the sidelight and the dashboard. An old curtain hung behind the seats, concealing the interior.
‘They’re going to call back in a minute,’ said Fry. ‘Is it unlocked?’
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‘I haven’t tried yet.’
Cooper took a tissue from his pocket and tried the handle of the driver’s door. The metal was tarnished and beginning to rust through the chrome. The button depressed, but there was no click of the catch, and the door didn’t move. He edged round the bonnet. The manufacturer’s VW badge had gone from the grille. No surprise there - at one time, the badges had been prized by local kids as trophies, as the initials were said to stand for their favourite catch phrase ‘Very Wicked’.
The passenger door was also locked. So was the side door. And so were the rear doors.
‘If this van was abandoned here by a car thief, it was a very security-conscious thief,’ he said.
‘Perhaps it’s not stolen at all, then. Maybe it was somebody who couldn’t be bothered taking it to the scrapyard.’
Fry’s radio crackled. While she listened, Cooper crouched to look underneath the van, noting a missing section of exhaust pipe and a dark patch on the ground that might have been oil. A cover was missing from one of the rear lights, and there were holes in the wheel arches caused by serious corrosion.
‘It’s registered to a Mr Calvin Lawrence of Stockport,’ said Fry. ‘But there’s no report of it being stolen.’ ‘Well, it hasn’t been on the road legally since October
1999,’ said Cooper, peering at the licence disc just visible behind the windscreen. ‘Not that it means anything necessarily.’ Discs were colour coded so that the month of expiry could be detected from a distance. But this
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one was so faded its original colour could have been any selection from the rainbow.
‘So the owner has abandoned it, then. This Calvin Lawrence presumably. Just another MoT failure, that’s all. We’ll get someone to remove it and report the owner for illegal tipping.’
‘It’s odd, though. Why come all the way from Stockport to leave it here? There must be any number of out-of- the-way places on the way between here and Stockport that you could abandon an old van, if you wanted to.’
‘Not to mention scrapyards,’ said Fry.
‘Funny that people never seem to think of that, isn’t it? As if the countryside is here just for them to use as a huge dump-it site.’
‘We’re not here to worry about the environment, Ben. Leave that to your friends with the red jackets.’
But Cooper was still frowning. ‘And if you were going to do that, why leave the plates on? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It isn’t our concern. We’ll pass it on to uniformed section.’
‘The funniest thing, though…’ said Cooper, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Have you noticed? The funniest thing about this van … is the smell.’
Fry sniffed, but shook her head. ‘Why, what is it? Petrol?’
‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, what then?’
Cooper stared at the side door of the van, his head cocked on one side as though he was listening to the
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sounds of its suspension rusting, or its rubber seals slowly rotting in the damp air. He waited until he was absolutely sure of what his senses were telling him. ‘Chicken curry,’ he said.
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11
Mark Roper had watched the police walk away from the farmhouse at Ringham Edge. They hadn’t got into the house, no more than anybody ever did. At first, he had thought the woman with Detective Constable Cooper might have been a social worker. Yvonne Leach had looked nervous when she opened the door, but it had soon become clear they had no knowledge or power that she might be afraid of. They hadn’t even glanced at the big shed behind the farmhouse, either.
For Mark, the choice was impossible. If he went to the police with his suspicions, it would be obvious where the information had come from. Obvious to Warren Leach, at least. It would be bad for farmers to get the idea that Rangers were spying on them, reporting them to the police, to social workers, or to the RSPCA over things that were none of the Rangers’ business. That would do nothing for relationships with landowners, which Owen said were so important to the Peak District National Park. There was no point in antagonizing Leach any further, so Owen said.
The source of the information would be obvious to Owen, too. And that would be even worse.
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Mark moved slightly as Yvonne Leach crossed the yard. He knew his outline was camouflaged by the trees behind him on the hillside, and his red jacket was below the level of the stone wall. Mrs Leach wouldn’t see him, anyway. The woman was too absorbed in her own troubles to see what went on around her. Leach himself had gone out an hour before. There had been police parked up the hill under the beeches, but they had ignored the farmer. They had nothing on Warren Leach, then. Not yet. Mark would have to wait a bit longer.
He wondered what Owen would do in the same situation. Probably he would recommend patience. But how long could you be expected to wait? How long could Mark be patient?
