‘Yes, I expect you do.’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘Are you going to tell me the truth?’
‘Perhaps I’d better/ she said. But Cooper, listening carefully to the intonation of her voice, thought she might as well have shaken her head and said ‘no’. Unlike some of the regular customers they had to interview at West Street, Angie Fry had learned to lie only through her words. She hadn’t mastered the techniques of controlling her voice and the expression on her face, of disguising the tension in her body and the look in her eyes. He had listened to scores of much better liars than Angie Fry. Much better.
1 heard you were a farm boy, Ben. So I looked in the local Yellow Pages for farmers called Cooper. Though I can’t imagine Di ever having any interest in farming.’
‘Di?’
The mocking smile was there this time, definitely. Cooper felt himself go a little pink in the neck. ‘Of course. Diane.’
‘We were always Di and Angie to each other, when we were little.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, I was lucky for once. The first number I tried was the wrong Cooper, but the second was right. Bridge End Farm, was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was that your dad I spoke to?’
Taken by surprise, Cooper tensed painfully, his fingernails stabbing into his palms as his hands clenched. The physical reaction to any unexpected mention of his father never failed to embarrass him.
‘I think it would have been my brother/ he said.
‘Oh, right.’ She raised an eyebrow slightly. ‘An older brother, is he? Interesting.’
That smile was starting to become annoying. Each time it appeared, it seemed to linger a bit longer, and looked a little more openly mocking.
‘Yes, an older brother. What’s interesting about that?’
‘I don’t know really. Just the older brother/older sister thing. It can be complicated, can’t it?’
203
‘I wouldn’t know/ said Cooper, who had decided he wasn’t going to give away even the slightest detail of his private life that ^
she didn’t know already. -51
‘Anyway, I made out I was an old college friend of yours who’d -2j
lost touch with you. I asked if you still lived there, at the farm.
And your brother told me you’d moved out, and he gave me your new address. He’s not like you, is he? He wasn’t suspicious of me at all. I take it he’s not a copper.’
‘Of course not. He’s a farmer.’
That part of the story, at least, would be easy enough to check out with Matt. Bridge End Farm was certainly in the Yellow Pages, but Angie could have thought that through. As for where she had heard that he was a farm boy in the first place, it seemed to Cooper that there was only one person who might have told Angie Fry that. And it made no sense at all.
‘What else did you hear about me?’ he said.
‘Not very much.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. What else is there to know about you?’
‘Not very much. But I’m curious where you heard anything about me at all.’
She hid her face in her coffee mug, lowering her eyes. ‘I asked around. Everyone knows you.’
That last bit was true, at least - Cooper could hardly deny that. There were far too many people in Edendale who knew all about him. Diane had told him he was mad to move into this flat in the centre of town, where he would be so close to so many people who knew exactly who he was and might have reason to bear a grudge. But it had caused no problems for him. Not until tonight, anyway.
‘You’re looking happier,’ said Cooper.
‘What?’
‘You’re smiling a lot. You weren’t smiling like that when you arrived.’
‘It must be because I feel at ease with you.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, you’re a good listener. But then, I suppose you’d say you’re trained to be.’
Cooper put down his mug. ‘You’d better get to the point and tell me what it is you want from me.’
‘Oh …’
204
He could feel himself starting to lose patience then. Angie was intruding into his private life uninvited and without a proper explanation, and he really didn’t have to be polite to her all evening, if he didn’t feel like it.
