‘If I get phoned up,’ said Cooper, ‘we’ll go some other time. I promise.’
He could almost hear the girls weighing up the value of his promise, and judging its reliability. They were far too wise
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to trust any promise that an adult made, but they wanted to believe him. He opened his mouth to add: I’ve never let you down before, have
A party of hikers went by. Their clothes were dazzling, and their walking poles the latest anti-shock design. Getting kitted up for a day on the Derbyshire hills was becoming an exercise in fashion awareness, and all the accessories had to be exactly right. Soon, people would be choosing their rucksacks to match the colour of their eyes.
A white-haired man walked towards them on the pedestrianized area. The first thing Cooper noticed was his comb over. Every time he saw one, Ben prayed that he’d have enough sense not to do it himself when he was losing his hair. Be bald, wear a hat - anything but a comb-over.
The man was wearing a silver-grey sports jacket and a blue silk shirt that hung outside his trousers. He had dazzling white trainers and a white toothbrush moustache that was probably the height of fashion when it had been black. His hair was long, too, even allowing for the requirements of his comb-over. He looked like an ageing British character actor playing the role of a faded gigolo.
Cooper was so distracted by the shopper that at first he didn’t notice a man in a security company uniform gesturing to him from the doorway of W.H. Smith’s. He was a retired police officer who had moved into the expanding private security business, so now he got a better uniform to wear.
‘I think there’s a couple of those Hanson brothers just been in here,’ he said. ‘Right toe-rags, they are. There’s a warrant out for both of them. I don’t know them myself, but it looked like them from the pictures.’
Cooper stopped. ‘I know them, but …’
‘You might want to keep an eye out for them. They’re probably somewhere down near the High Street.’
Amy and Josie were looking at the man and listening with interest.
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‘Look, I’m off duty,’ said Cooper.
The security man noticed the girls for the first time. ‘Oh, right. You’ve got your kids with you.’
‘They’re not mine, actually.’
‘I see.’
‘They’re my nieces. My brother’s children.’
Cooper had realized before he even stopped to speak to him that the ex-bobby was just the right age to have worked with his father. He found himself fidgeting immediately, anxious to move on before the reminiscences began, the stories of late turns together as young PCs. Because they would be followed very quickly by the assurances of how much everyone had respected and loved Sergeant Joe Cooper, and how devastated they’d all been when it happened.
It wasn’t so much of a problem at the West Street station in Edendale these days, but the retired coppers were the worst. These were the blokes who had been counting the days and hours until they could collect their full pensions after thirty years’ service. Yet now you would think they’d been forced to leave behind the happiest days of their lives.
‘Must get on,’ said Cooper. ‘Nice to see you.’
‘Hey, these must be Joe Cooper’s grandchildren, then.’
But Cooper just waved and smiled as he put distance between himself and the doorway of Smith’s. Josie had to run to catch up with him.
Cooper thought occasionally of his own old age, though it was usually a brief speculation about whether he would live longer than his father had. He didn’t feel any great desire to be a dad himself. Not just yet, anyway. But when he was old, when he was as helpless as his own mother was now, who would be there to look after him? At the present rate, there would be no one.
But that day was decades away; not something to worry about now. It was only the approach of his birthday that was
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making him think about ageing. And it wasn’t just any birthday this time, either.
Joe Cooper’s birthday had been in July, too. That meant they shared the star sign of Cancer, the crab in its shell. An astrologer would probably have been delighted that it had taken Cooper so long to move out of Bridge End Farm for a place of his own. A reluctance to leave the family home, a need to cling on to his shell. He would be thirty years old on Saturday, for heaven’s sake.
As for his job, Cooper was sure he’d be asked one day soon to undergo a bit of lateral development and say goodbye to CID for a while. Somebody was going to turn up with a sharp knife to prise him out of his shell.
‘You should have introduced us to that man,’ said Amy. ‘He knew Granddad.’
‘I thought you wanted your lunch?’
‘It wasn’t very polite.’
‘You’re not polite either,’ said Josie to her sister. ‘You say “arse”.’
Cooper wondered for a moment if he was being selfish. He hadn’t wanted to hear a retired bobby’s stories about his father. In fact, he’d been worried that this ex-copper might have been one of those called to the scene of Sergeant Joe Cooper’s death, and would therefore be carrying a picture in his head of the body lying in its pool of blood. He definitely didn’t want to go there.
But Amy and Josie might want to talk about their grandfather with someone who’d known him, someone other than a member of their own family. It might help them understand what had happened.
Cooper shook his head. That was something else he wasn’t going to take responsibility for. Matt could negotiate that minefield himself.
At the corner of High Street and Clappergate, a few yards short of McDonald’s, Cooper saw two of the Hanson
