At the moment, there was no sound that would suggest the presence of the dog - no click of claws on concrete or of a chain rattling. The fusty smell of wood and rusted iron was too strong for him to pick up a canine scent. But he would have to watch out for a kennel or a pen of some kind when he got closer to number 2. The dog had been taught not to bark or growl before it attacked, and that had two results. It would give him no warning of an attack, but it also meant the dog could listen more acutely without the noise of its own barking to hinder it. Cooper knew that it would hear him much sooner than he heard it. There would be no contest. If the dog came for him, his only hope might be to climb the pallets and hope the stacks were more stable than they looked.
His foot nudged something heavy that made a metallic scraping sound as it moved. Cooper leaned down and felt what was on the ground. Something round and heavy, and made of steel. He moved his hand along, but had the sense of something that stretched several yards ahead of him. There were more lying next to it, too. Scaffolding pipes.
It was becoming more difficult to move around here. The ground was littered with unidentifiable objects, and the path between them wasn’t clear. But up ahead, Cooper could see the outline of the flat-bed lorry the Oxleys used.
He looked towards the houses. Apart from number 7, where
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Mrs Wallwin lived, none of them had their curtains drawn closed on their downstairs windows. Numbers 2 and 4 had lights showing, and Cooper could see into their kitchens. Presumably, the Oxleys weren’t concerned about people peering into their windows from the back. Who would be in the yard behind Waterloo Terrace at night, anyway? Nobody with any sense, thought Cooper.
Mrs Wallwin, though, had different habits. Either she had good reason to expect someone to be peering in, or she had something to hide. Wendy Tagg would say the latter. But Cooper thought he’d be surprised if Mrs Wallwin didn’t get some level of harassment from the Oxley children, even if it was only banging on her windows and shouting insults. Even the youngest children would soon have picked up on the atmosphere of hostility towards her, and weren’t so restrained in expressing it.
Cooper made the decision not to venture any further, but to go back down the passage or through the house to his car, where he could call in and fetch a torch. But before he could turn round, he became aware that he was seeing a movement just beyond the garden - the movement of a dark shape against the stacks of pallets in the yard and the slightly lighter tree cover on the hillside behind Withens. He watched the shape move along the fence, then stop and turn towards him.
Cautiously, Cooper felt his way towards the fence and found he could see a gap where a gate must be open. He edged sideways, maneuvering for a better angle from where he could see the figure against the sky.
It was a person, certainly, but it seemed unnaturally tall. Scott Oxley was tall - but not that tall. There were other things wrong, too - the silhouette didn’t quite gel with what a human outline should look like. Cooper was squinting to try to make out details of the odd shape, when he realized there was another standing within a couple of feet of it. Then a third and a fourth became visible. There was a line of them along the inside of the fence, standing among the pallets and scaffolding pipes and piles of old tyres.
There was a scratching sound and a spark of flame from a match as one of the figures lit a cigarette. Cooper saw the heads and shoulders of four people. He saw four black faces, but no eyes. Where their eyes should have been, there were only a series of metallic flashes reflecting the flame of the match before it died.
But it wasn’t the sight of the reflected flames that Cooper stirred
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the hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck. It wasn’t the whiff of sulphur from the match, or the acrid taste of the cigarette smoke on the air. His overwhelming memory of the moment would be the bitter-sweet mingling of sweat, leather and beer. And the faint jingling of tiny bells.
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I
I
26
As soon as they turned off the motorway and headed back into Derbyshire, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin began passing through fields of oilseed rape that Fry had noticed on their way to the West Midlands. She had the window open, and the ammonia reek of the crop filled the car. She had surprised herself earlier by knowing that the yellow flowers were oilseed rape. Ben Cooper’s world must be rubbing off on her.
‘Well, that was a bit of a waste of time,’ said Murfin.
‘Not entirely.’
‘Eh? That Stark girl was a dead loss. She has a short-term memory problem, if you ask me.’
‘She certainly couldn’t remember anything that wasn’t in the West Midlands reports at the time.’
‘She remembered the Renshaws.’
‘Yes. In fact, you’d almost think she wanted to forget all about it.’
‘But Emma Renshaw was supposed to be her friend,’ protested Murfin.
‘Mmm. But people deal with these things in different ways, Gavin. Maybe Debbie Stark had it right. She said she was upset for a while, but then she managed to put it behind her. Like she said, she had to move on, and get on with her life.’
‘I wouldn’t forget my friends so quickly.’
‘I don’t know. Old schoolfriends, old college friends - we soon lose touch with them, because it doesn’t take long before we have nothing in common any more.’
‘I didn’t go to college,’ said Murfin.
‘You know what I mean.’
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I
‘Yeah suPP°se so. But I’ve missed my tea because of her, that’s fi
all.’ m
Fry kPew tuat’ whatever Gavin Murfin’s drawbacks, he had t;
served ir1 ^^ ^or Years ar>d had a lot of experience of interviews H&
and had come across all kinds of suspects. W
