polite name. Her sister Amy took pleasure in saying ‘the Devil’s Arse’, for the opposite reason. Or perhaps it was for the same reason - to get his attention.
‘What was the poem called again?’
‘Well, the man said it was The Gypsies Metamorphosed, but that’s the name of a book, not the poem. Anyway, the poem’s called “Cock Lorrel”. Do you want to read it?’
‘Er …’ Cooper looked at the book Josie was holding, and then at her face. ‘OK. Thank you.’
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He took it and read the first verse of the poem aloud:
‘Cock Lorrel would needs have the Devil his guest, And bade him once into the Peak to dinner, Where never the fiend had such a feast Provided him yet at the charge of a sinner.’
He began to read the second verse, then paused. ‘Did you read this, Josie?’
‘Yes. It’s a bit gruesome, I think.’
‘Yes, it is a bit.’
Silently, Cooper scanned the rest of the poem. It seemed to be a catalogue of the dishes enjoyed by Cock Lorrel and the Devil during one of the notorious cannibalistic feasts in the cavern - the Beggars’ Banquets. There was: ‘A rich, fat usurer stewed in his marrow,/ And by him a lawyer’s head and green sauce’ and ‘Six pickled tailors sliced and cut,/Sempsters and tirewomen, fit for his palate.’
‘What are tirewomen?’ said Josie, effortlessly following his progress through the poem.
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to look it up.’
Then Cooper wondered whether that was the right thing to have said. For all he knew, tirewomen could be some kind of prostitute. Matt would be thrilled if he thought his brother was encouraging his daughters to do that sort of research.
But the passage that made Cooper stop was roughly halfway through the poem. Ben Jonson had really managed to hit a nerve with this one:
Then carbonadoed and cooked with pains, Was brought up a cloven sergeant’s face: The sauce was made of his yeoman’s brains, That had been beaten out with his mace.
With an effort to appear calm, Cooper handed the book back
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to his niece. He smiled, knowing as he did it that she’d be able to read every emotion on his face.
‘You did a great job finding the poem, Josie,’ he said. ‘A really great job.’
At West Street that night, Diane Fry was working late. A shift had gone off duty, and another had come on without her noticing. The noise and chaos of changeover would normally have irritated her, but tonight it passed her by. She was sitting at a desk in the CID room with a pile of papers on either side of her, turning over pages with one hand and making notes with the other. Occasionally, Fry looked up, slightly disorientated. Nobody who came into the room even tried to speak to her, though they looked at her curiously. The expression on her face was enough to deter them from asking her why she was sitting not at her own desk, but at Ben Cooper’s.
If anyone had dared to ask, Fry would probably have said that she was reading the documents from the Carol Proctor case because she had nothing better to do. Earlier, Angie had surprised her by phoning her at the office.
‘Hi, are you busy?’ she’d said.
T’m always busy.’
‘Right. You never stop trying to climb that slippery ladder, do you, Sis?’
‘What do you want?’ said Fry. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No. It’s just that I didn’t see you this morning before you went out. How did you get on with nice Constable Cooper last night?’
‘Angie, I haven’t time for this ‘
‘OK, OK.’ Angie’s tone had changed. ‘I want to let you know I’ll be out tonight. Just in case you start getting worried about me.’
‘Where are you going?’ said Fry, conscious that she was sounding like a fussy parent again.
‘I’ve got people to see, that’s all. I do have a life of my
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own, Diane. It went on without you for fifteen years, and it doesn’t just stop.’
Fry hadn’t pressed her any further, though she knew she’d spend the night worrying. She wanted to ask Angie what time she’d be home, but she managed to hold back the words.
So tonight, Fry needed something else to think about, to take her mind off her sister. The hay fever was making her feel rough enough without the extra stress. The trouble was, the material that she was reading on the Carol Proctor case wasn’t making her any happier.
Mansell Ouinn smiled. He released the pressure on the trigger and swung the sights of the crossbow past the running girl and back to the windows of the house. The more he handled the weapon, the more confident he felt with it. The perfect balance and the feel of its stock in his hands helped to counter the pain in his side.
Quinn slid his hand inside his shirt to check the bleeding. Will Thorpe had taken a three-inch gouge out of his skin with the bolt he’d fired in the field barn. It hadn’t been too bad a shot - not in the dark, at a moving target, with no time to aim properly. Quinn knew he was lucky to be alive.
He looked for movement in the downstairs windows one by one, then raised the sights of the crossbow to the first floor, watching the play of light and shadow carefully as the evening light faded. He shifted slightly on the grass, conscious of several small stones lying against his ribs. The movement sent a stab of pain through his side that made him wince and catch his breath.
The wound would slow him down, of course, and that might have been a problem when he was going to be faced with someone much younger than himself. But now he had the crossbow it wouldn’t matter so much. If he’d wanted to, he could have killed the girl. If he’d missed the first time, he
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could have fired two or three bolts into her, and no one would have known where they came from.
He froze for a moment, focusing all his attention on one of the windows. But the movement he could see was only the lengthening shadows of the trees on the opposite hill, outlined by the low sun.
Quinn let out his breath. Of all the things he’d worried about until now, he had never doubted that he would