But Stride seemed to have departed. Though his body
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still sprawled against the cushions, his mind had left, perhaps to drift over the moor with the kestrel. He had sunk into a state of exhaustion, and when he spoke again it was no more than a whisper, addressed only to himself. ‘I can still see her face.’ Owen and Cal seemed at ease with each other. Cooper wondered what they had talked about while he was away, whether they had simply exchanged comfortable insults as they drank their beer. Owen drained his can and they all went outside, leaving Stride alone. Cal was still looking at Cooper suspiciously. ‘Do you really not have a life to go back to, Cal?’ said Cooper. ‘Oh, yeah. If I wanted to. There are the aged parents, if I want to spend the rest of my life being lectured at. There was a girlfriend as well. But, well … sometimes you’re better off on your own, you know?’ ‘But you’re not on your own now.’ The and Stride? Stride says it was karma, us meeting like that. You know, the idea of fate repaying you for what you’ve done in a previous life?’ ‘He seems to be quite knowledgeable about esoteric practices.’ ‘He knows sod all about it,’ said Cal. ‘Oh?’ ‘He’s picked up a few phrases from books here and there, that’s all. But it keeps him content in himself. That’s what religion is for, isn’t it? Whatever he believes in, it works for him.’ ‘Like the auric egg.’
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‘Yeah, well. If he actually believes it keeps negative mind energies away, then it probably does.’ Cooper considered this. It seemed as useful as any advice a psychiatrist could have given. ‘How well do you really know Stride?’ ‘He’s my brother.’ ‘You met him only a few months ago, at the summer solstice.’ ‘That doesn’t make any difference. He’s my brother.’ ‘I bet you don’t know anything about him. Where is he from?’ ‘What does it matter? Who cares what he did or where he came from in another life? This is our life. This is what matters now.’ ‘Do you go up on the moor sometimes?’ asked Cooper. ‘Of course.’ ‘To the stone circle?’ ‘Stride likes to talk to the Virgins. Nothing wrong with that. He’s not doing any harm.’ ‘Do you go with him? Or does he go on his own?’ Cal clamped his mouth shut. ‘I think I’ve talked to you enough.’ ‘Does he go out on his own at night?’ ‘You’re like all the others really, aren’t you? You sneak your way into the van, thinking you’ll get something on us. Well, just leave off Stride. He doesn’t do anyone any harm, not now.’ ‘Not now?’ said Cooper gently. But Cal turned on his heel with a scowl and walked back to the van. Cooper looked at his watch. He had
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spent too long at Ringham Moor already. He had an appointment with another set of stones, and there would be trouble if he was late.
Like most things in Edendale, the cemetery was built halfway up a hill. Over the bottom wall, beech trees ran down Mill Bank to an estate of new housing off Meadow Road, where white semis clustered round the back of the council highways depot. A squirrel foraged among the leaves and dead branches on the floor beneath the beeches.
Sergeant Joe Cooper was buried in the new part of the cemetery, brought into use four or five years ago, when the old one became full. In the new cemetery, there were no visible graves, only rows of headstones, with the grass mowed smooth right up to them. The dead were no longer allowed to be untidy. These headstones would never loosen and tilt and grow moss with age. They were orderly, almost regimented, a picture of civic perfection. Sergeant Cooper was far tidier now than he had been at the moment of his dying, when his blood had run out on to the stone setts in Clappergate, leaving a stain that had taken council workmen weeks to remove. His killing had darkened the reputation of the town for months afterwards. No wonder they wanted to tidy him away.
Occasionally, a jam-jar full of spring flowers or petunias appeared in front of the headstone. The Coopers never knew who they were from.
The brothers had said nothing to each other as they drove to the cemetery. By the time they were out of the
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car and back in the open air, Ben was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the silence between them.
‘We went to see Warren Leach again yesterday,’ he said as they followed the path towards their father’s grave. ‘I just wondered if you found anything out…’
Matt didn’t answer. His shoulders stiffened a bit, and his stride quickened.
‘There must be somebody who knows him, Matt.’ ‘I dare say.’
But Matt sounded so dismissive that Ben knew not to press it. The silence had grown even deeper by the time they reached the right spot. On every occasion they came, the row of graves had extended a little further, as if their father was somehow physically receding into the past.
Ben and Matt left their flowers and found a bench under the hawthorn hedge, where they could see the headstone. The cemetery grass had been raked clear of leaves. It glittered an unnaturally bright green against the browns and oranges of the hillside behind it, and the grey of the stone houses piled on top of each other on the outskirts of the town.
For a while, the brothers sat and watched each other’s breath drifting in small clouds, cold and formless, vanishing before it had even moved out of reach.
‘Two years, and it doesn’t seem a day,’ said Matt. His words couldn’t help but sound trite, but Ben was sure they were sincere. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.
‘I still keep expecting him to appear. I think he’s going to come round the corner and tell me to stop idling
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around. It’s as if he’s just been on night shift for a while. Remember when we didn’t used to see him for a few days, then he would appear again, looking so tired? He always said it was short turn that was the real killer.’
‘He was already too old for night shifts by then.’ ‘But he wouldn’t stop doing it. He always did his stint.’
There was a new National Police Memorial being created in Staffordshire, with a commemorative avenue of trees known as ‘The Beat’ and a daily roll of honour showing details of the officers who had died on duty. The work would take several years to complete, and Ben Cooper had offered to help.
Here in the cemetery, Sergeant Joe Cooper’s name was carved in stone. Eventually, it would be worn away by the rain driven down the Eden Valley, and the February frosts would crumble the surfaces. But now, just two years from his death, the letters were still crisp and clear, with sharply chiselled edges, cold and precise. Life might be brief and transient, scrawled in the sand. But death was written in a much harder alphabet.
Ben had the names of the group of youths who had killed his father imprinted on his mind. Now and then, they cropped up in other enquiries, or in court cases he read about in the Eden Valley Times. Two of them were still serving ten-year sentences for manslaughter, but those who were free seemed to be following predictable careers. It wouldn’t be long before they, too, had a taste of prison. The thought gave Cooper no satisfaction. It would solve nothing.
As always on these occasions, he found his brain spill
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ing out memories like sour wine from an uncorked bottle; deeply stored images of his father that were preserved as if in vinegar. There were glimpses of a tall, strong man with wide shoulders and
