Owen’s voice cracked. Cooper looked away, over his head, to avoid seeing his expression, waiting while he recovered. He felt like a voyeur suddenly faced with something far more personal and intimate than he had expected.
‘Her mind was fine, but her body was long past being
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able to keep up with her,’ said Owen. ‘I think that’s the saddest thing of all, don’t you? It meant she knew exactly what was happening to her. It was a long drawnout torture.’ ‘How long did you live together, just the two of you?’ ‘Thirty years.’ ‘Thirty years? Owen, you must have been ?’ ‘Since I was twenty-three.’ ‘Well, you’re right about a marriage. Except that not many couples stay together so long these days.’ Owen nodded. ‘We depended on each other. That’s the difference, isn’t it? You stay together when you need each other. Most of the couples I see, they don’t really need each other - not after the sex thing is done with and the kids have grown up. Sixteen years at most, and the reasons for their marriage have gone. There’s no real tie to keep them from drifting apart. No ties like there are with a parent. Real blood ties.’ ‘But never to have your own life, Owen…’ ‘You still don’t really understand. Mum was my life. Oh, I had the job. I’ve always loved being a Ranger, and I wouldn’t have done anything else. But I’ve never really had friends - plenty of acquaintances, but no friends. And I was never going anywhere else, because I was needed right here, in Cargreave. I had a purpose. Until she died.’ ‘That must have left a big hole in your life,’ said Cooper, aware of how inadequate the words were. He had an inkling of what it must have meant to Owen not just to lose a part of your life, but to lose its entire purpose. It made him think of Warren Leach, who had
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come to the same point himself, in his own way, but had chosen a different method of dealing with it. Owen had followed a different path - less violent, perhaps, but just as destructive. Cooper ran his eye over the ornate writing on the stone slab. The oldfashioned letters were difficult to read, full of curlicues and elegant swirls, not like the nice, plain print of a newspaper headline. The effects of the weather and the rubbing of many hands had worn the inscriptions down so much over the centuries that they had almost been lost entirely. The Commandments were so difficult to see that they were easy to ignore, too empty of significance to draw meaning from any more. Cooper traced the wording of number nine, taking his time, almost reluctant to get to the end of the sentence. “‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,”’ he said. The Ranger stared at him, puzzled. ‘Just because I had that stuff on the computer, it doesn’t mean I’d do anything to children, you know. I want to tell people that, but they won’t listen. On the way here, I passed a man that I’ve known all my life. He came to Mum’s funeral. Today, he crossed the road to avoid me; when I got past, he spat on the pavement.’ The flock of starlings in the yew trees fell suddenly quiet. Cooper glanced nervously at the churchyard. For the third time in a week, he found himself worrying that someone might see him where he shouldn’t be. There were several routes he could take to get into big trouble, and he was following them all simultaneously.
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He couldn’t help wondering what his father would have done. Would he have followed the path he thought to be right, and tried to achieve justice? Or would he have stuck to the rules? Cooper wished he could get a message from him somehow. But he was in the wrong place for that - Joe Cooper had never believed in a God bigger than himself.
‘That woman you were accused of assaulting ten years ago…’
‘It was different,’ said Owen. ‘Totally different.’ ‘You can see why it might look similar.’
‘Not at all. That woman pursued me constantly. It was well known in the village that she wasn’t right in the head. She would never leave me alone. It was terrible. Despite everything I could do to avoid her, she managed to get me on my own one day at home. All I did was push her away to make her leave. But she fell on the steps outside the house and banged her head. That was it. That was all that happened. Of course, her version was quite different. The things she said afterwards …’
Owen rubbed his fingers through his beard, so that the grey hair stuck out in odd directions. He tried to wipe away a trickle of sweat from his temple and left a dark smear instead.
‘Do people here in the village know about your conviction?’ asked Cooper. ‘You’ve lived here all your life, after all.’
‘Yes, they know. They knew all about it at the time, and they don’t forget.’
‘Yet nobody has said anything to us. Of all the calls
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that have come in to the incident room, no one from Cargreave has pointed out your history. If it hadn’t been for your name cropping up in the paedophile enquiry, it would never have come to light.’
Owen nodded. ‘It’s because I belong here. Those other people, on the internet, I meant nothing to them. I had no place there. And now look what I’ve done to my life in Cargreave. I’ve been on the parish council for fifteen years. But the chairman left a message on my answerphone last night and said the most appalling things. Mary Salt used to be one of Mum’s patients. Mum delivered both her children. I can never look Mary Salt in the eye again. I’ve just put my resignation through her letter box.’
Cooper began to feel as if he were standing at the front door of someone’s house, searching fruitlessly for the right words to break the bad news when a family had lost a loved one - a father killed in a car crash, a teenager dead of an ecstasy overdose, a young girl snatched and dumped dead by the roadside. After a while, you learned there were no right words. You just did it, got it over with, and tried to keep up the barriers against the emotions you were bombarded with.
People wanted you to play God. They wanted you to bring the husband or daughter back to life somehow. In training, you were told how relatives might react, but not how you were going to react yourself. You weren’t trained in dealing with your own feelings. And those emotions didn’t come from a bottomless well. Every time you drained the emotional reserves, it took a bit longer to refill. Cooper had started to worry
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that eventually it wouldn’t refill at all. One day that well might prove to be dry, and instead of normal feelings, all he would touch would be a dry, cracked surface, barren and stinking, like the sides of Ladybower Reservoir after a hot summer.
‘I don’t understand, Owen. Did you never have a girlfriend?’ said Cooper.
The Ranger shook his head. ‘It’s old fashioned, I suppose.’
Old fashioned? Cooper didn’t comment on the understatement. Most people these days would find it incomprehensible. Perversely, he knew, this would be another thing that Owen would find held against him.
‘I was always awkward and shy as a teenager,’ said Owen. ‘I never developed the knack of forming relationships.’
‘And when there was just you and your mother? Surely it wasn’t too late?’
For answer, Owen stared at the Ten Commandments. Cooper tried to follow the direction of his gaze. Which commandment riveted his attention, and what thoughts had his question provoked that made Owen look so amazed and appalled at the way his life had turned out?
