‘She would have mentioned it to Neil afterwards, if ‘
‘Yeah. But I only wanted to talk to her, you know. It wouldn’t have mattered, except - Well, it went all right for a while. We chatted about all kinds of things, and I thought we were getting on really well, until she started to talk about Neil. Do you know what she wanted? She wanted me to speak to Neil for her, to tell him how much she liked him. How pathetic is that?’
‘How far on the way home did you get?’ said Fry coldly, picturing the quiet road where Emma’s mobile phone had been found.
‘I don’t really know. We argued a lot. I turned off the A6 somewhere when she started to get really upset. She got her mobile
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phone out and was going to phone her parents, but I grabbed it off her and threw it out of the window/
‘We found that/ said Fry. ‘What I want to know is where you killed her/
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know where it was. She started calling me all kind of things and comparing me to Neil, so I lost my temper and hit her. Then she started screaming and got out of the car, so I went after her and hit her again. I hit her a few times, until she stopped screaming/
Fry paused. Not for Granger to recover this time, but for herself. Now, finally, she could picture Emma Renshaw - but it was as Emma had been at the moment of her death, not as she had been in life.
As soon as she was finished here, Fry had to visit the Renshaws. She had made them a promise that she would keep them up to date personally on the enquiry. But explaining the facts of the case against Philip Granger to them would not be easy.
‘This must have been a very quiet spot, Mr Granger,’ she said.
‘I parked on a grass verge somewhere. All I remember were some stone walls and a gate into a field/
‘What did you do with Emma?’
‘I dragged her into the field and hid her behind the wall. No cars came past all the time we were there. So I was lucky, too, I suppose/
‘Yes, you were/
‘Mr Granger, we’re going to ask you to look at some maps and show us the area where you think you were at the time/ said Kitchens.
‘I was lost/ said Granger. ‘I can’t tell you the exact place/
‘Nevertheless, we’ll want to narrow it down as much as possible, so that we can do our best to find Emma. Are you willing to cooperate in that, sir?’
Granger shrugged. ‘OK. But you have to realize it was all my brother’s fault/
‘I don’t think so/ said Fry.
‘Oh, yes, it was/ he said. ‘It was his fault. My dear little brother/
Ben Cooper watched through his rearview mirror as a bus pulled up near the Pepper Pot Inn in the village of Midhopestones. Only three people got off the bus. Two of them looked at the threatening sky and went into the pub. The third one waited until the
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r
bus had set off again and began to walk slowly up the road.
Cooper hadn’t felt the need to tell Angle Fry what sort of car he drove. She probably knew that already, along with its registration number. And maybe his date of birth, his mother’s maiden name and his National Insurance number.
As Angie got into the Toyota, he continued looking at his mirror, expecting to see a car turning into the road or maneuvering to leave the pub car park. But there was nothing. He started the engine.
‘Where are we going?’ said Angie.
‘Somewhere quiet.’
‘Embarrassed to be seen with me, Ben?’
Cooper didn’t answer, but continued to drive back towards the Flouch crossroads. They passed through Langsett, and soon the surrounding landscape began to look suitably remote. He felt confident that Angie would not be familiar with this area and would have no idea where they were heading.
‘Angie, I take it you know what happened to Diane there before she transferred to Derbyshire?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘In fact, you’re remarkably well informed for someone who hasn’t been in touch with her sister for so long.’
Angie hesitated. There are ways of finding these things out.’
‘I’m sure there are. Especially with the help of your friend who drives the dark blue BMW with a blocked registration.’
‘Blocked registration?’ she repeated, dumbly seizing on the part of his sentence she didn’t understand.
‘What is he? National Crime Squad? Special Branch? Who are you working with who doesn’t want some long- lost sister blundering on to his pitch?’
‘Ben, you don’t understand the situation.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Cooper.
And for the first time he began to feel angry about the way he had been treated. He had known from the start that he was being lied to. There was no way that Angie Fry could have obtained the information that she had without inside help, without someone with exactly the right contacts and the means of asking. Being lied to was bad enough. But it was the underlying contempt that really angered him, the assumption that he was just some
