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into the air, complaining raucously; they could hear the old farm dog, Molly, begin to bark hysterically in the yard.
And then they heard the silence that followed. And the silence was the loudest sound of all.
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Mark Roper stopped on the path to Ringham Moor and touched his face gingerly where Leach had hit him. His lip was split, and a tooth was loose. If it was true about Owen, he knew he ought to feel the outrage that had been expressed by his fellow Rangers. But Owen’s arrest the day before had confused him. Mark knew that Owen would have been up here to check on his wall, if he could have done. Instead, Mark was doing it for him.
When he got near the top of the path above Ringham Edge Farm that afternoon, Mark saw a woman in a yellow jacket climbing towards the Hammond Tower. It was the first time he had seen a woman walking on her own for over a week. There had been plenty of warnings about the dangers for lone women. But some of them couldn’t stay away. There was something that drew them, like the women who were attracted to form relationships with convicted murderers and rapists.
He had brought a rucksack from home, because the one he usually used for patrols had been in the briefing centre, which had been closed by the police. But at least this rucksack held a pair of binoculars. He focused them
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on the woman, following her movements through the high bracken until she reached a clear spot. She paused, and looked around. And then Mark saw her face. He recognized the long, red scar and the disfigured cheek, the twisted eye. He had seen her photograph in the incident room at Edendale, during the briefing three days before. Even if he hadn’t recognized her, he would have had to do something. Women weren’t safe alone on Ringham Moor any more.
Mark called in. ‘Peakland Partridge Three. Put me through to the police incident room.’
Then he leaned on the wall and looked down on Ringham Edge Farm. And he saw that the police were already there.
Warren Leach hadn’t bothered to move out of the kitchen after the boys had left the house. The blast of the shotgun had shredded the back of his skull, and his body had been thrown off the chair and on to the floor, where it lay among the debris of dropped food and unwashed clothes. A dog chained near the back door was barking ferociously, driven into a frenzy by the arrival of so many strangers. No one dared go near it. Someone had called for the dog warden and a vet.
When Ben Cooper had first arrived, a middleaged man wearing jeans and a tweed jacket had been standing in the yard next to a red pick-up, talking to Todd Weenink. He turned out to be a farmer from across the valley, and Leach had rung to ask him to milk the cows that afternoon.
‘He’s taken that way out, has he?’ said the farmer. ‘I
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can’t say it’s a surprise. He isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. Some prefer to finish it cleanly, like.’ When Cooper looked at the state of the farm’s kitchen, he realized clean wasn’t the word for what Warren Leach had done. He stood in the doorway of the room, careful not to go too near. He could see a white envelope on the cluttered kitchen table. It was an official-looking envelope, with the address neatly typed. Unlike some of the others, which were obviously bills and unopened, Leach had slit the top of this envelope open with a knife, leaving a greasy butter stain on the edge of the flap. Cooper didn’t need to look at the letter inside. He guessed it was a notification to Mr Warren Leach that a prosecution was being considered under the Firearms Act 1986. Cooper wondered whether there was anything else they could have done. They had contacted Social Services after their visit to Yvonne Leach, but that had been out of concern for the children, Will and Dougie. Who had been concerned about the fate of their father? Warren Leach had needed help, if anyone had. The evidence was there to be seen on the floor and walls. A few minutes later, Cooper was very glad of the call that took him and Weenink away from the farm and up the hill to meet the young Ranger, Mark Roper. Mark seemed even younger today. It wasn’t just the fact that his face was bruised and swollen. In between the bruises, he looked pale and lost, like a boy waiting for somebody to tell him what to do. ‘Are you sure it’s her?’ asked Cooper. ‘I’m sure.’
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Cooper felt certain Mark was observant enough to be right. This was a situation where Diane Fry would have to be involved. It was late afternoon by the time Diane Fry arrived at Ringham, and she was in a bad mood. She drove up the track past the farmhouse to where she could see other vehicles parked on the hill. ‘Where is she?’ she asked when she saw Cooper and Weenink under the trees. Cooper bent down to her car window. ‘She’s up there.’ He gestured vaguely, irritating her still further. ‘On the moor?’ Fry got out of the car and flexed her leg. She could feel her knee starting to swell up. She ought to be at home with a bag of frozen peas on it - if only she had any frozen peas in the freezer compartment of her fridge. She struggled up the rocky slope to look towards the plateau. She was no more than half a mile from Top Quarry. ‘Where is she exactly?’ ‘Near the Cat Stones, where she was attacked,’ said Cooper. ‘It was Mark Roper who reported sighting her earlier this afternoon. She refuses to come down. We were just discussing taking her into custody for her own safety.’ ‘What?’ ‘She can’t stay up there. She’s not safe. What if she runs into our killer? That would be just great, wouldn’t it?’
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‘It’s not very likely.’ Cooper shook his head in exasperation as she pulled on her black jacket. ‘OK, I’ll come with you.’ ‘Don’t bother,’ she said. Fry began to walk away, tugging her jacket around her as she strode towards the path, brushing past a PC talking on his personal radio. Cooper and Weenink watched her go. Weenink’s expression was puzzled as he leaned towards his partner. ‘Ben?’ ‘Fetch the car,’ said Cooper. ‘Where are we going?’ ‘To see Mark Roper again.’ ‘Why?,
‘Because I feel like something to cheer me up.’ ‘But ‘ Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘Will you just fetch the car?’ ‘Jesus,’ said Weenink. ‘I thought it was only women who had a wrong time of the month.’ Mark was sitting on the ground in his red fleece jacket, with Owen’s walling hammer in his hand. Occasionally, he dug the cutting edge of the hammer hard into the soil and studied the shape of the gouge he had made. ‘So is the wall finished?’ asked Cooper. ‘I thought it was,’ said Mark. ‘But look at that.’ He pointed down the length of the newly-rebuilt stretch. The stones had bulged and bellied outwards, and the coping stones had slipped from their places, exposing the filling, which trickled from the interior of the wall like grain from a split sack.
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‘What did that?’ ‘A rotten stone,’ said Mark. ‘One single rotten stone that crumbled with the weight and let down everything above it. Owen must not have spotted it when he put it in place. He says every stone has to play its part. You can’t have weaknesses, or the whole thing comes down.’ ‘That’s a shame.’ Cooper looked at the young Ranger more closely. ‘Mark, how did you come by those bruises?’ Mark touched his face again. ‘Oh, I slipped and landed face first on some rocks. I’ll survive.’ ‘You sure?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Mark, has Owen ever said anything to you about children?’ The Ranger looked away. ‘Not much. He always says: “Kids? I love ‘em. But I couldn’t eat a whole one.,, ‘ Cooper nodded, listening for something beyond the old joke. ‘I suppose you have to do school visits as a Ranger.’ ‘It’s part of the job these days. They say if we educate youngsters about what Rangers do, they’ll respect the Peak Park and what goes on in it. That’s the theory, anyway. But Owen says a school visit just gives the kids a chance to take the piss out of you all at once instead of one at a time.’ ‘Yeah, I know what he means. But Owen has no children, has he?’ ‘He’s a good bloke, Owen,’ said Mark. ^ ^
