‘Fair enough.’
‘So is the professor married?’
‘I don’t know. He’s never mentioned a Mrs Robertson.’
‘Can you find out?’
‘I suppose so.’
Cooper’s assumption had been that Robertson was a bachelor, or divorced. Men with obsessions were difficult to live with. But you could never be sure - it was remarkable the compromises people could come to in their relationships.
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you,’ said Cooper. ‘I had a really bad time at Mrs Gill’s. All the family were there, getting ready for the funeral this afternoon. Audrey Steele’s second funeral, that is. They interrogated me about how we were doing with the enquiry.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘There wasn’t much I could tell them. They weren’t very happy with that. I was glad to get away before they formed a lynch mob.’
‘These jobs have to be done.’
The outcrop called Peter’s Stone or Gibbet Rock stood towards the north end of the Cressbrook Dale nature reserve, an area of limestone grassland, with ash woodlands further down the dale. There was a path along the stream into the dale, reached through a tiny, spring-loaded gate and a gap in the stone wall that was just wide enough for a slim person not wearing too many clothes. Cooper thought he would probably manage to squeeze through, as long as he was trying it before lunch and not after.
‘There must be another way,’ said Fry, looking at the fields full of sheep. In the bottom of the dale, the rushing stream looked impossible to cross.
‘Yes, I think there is.’
Right at the junction of the Wardlow road, they found a
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gateway in a farmyard, just wide enough for Cooper’s Toyota to scrape through, past a mildewed hawthorn tree. The gate was secured only by a length of orange baler twine looped over the stone gate post. The four-wheel drive managed fine on the track until they came to a point where the swollen stream had breached the field wall and swamped the ground on the other side. Cooper stopped and looked up at Peter’s Stone, still two hundred yards away.
‘We’re going to have to walk, I’m afraid.’
Fry opened the passenger door and looked down at the water lapping gently against the wheels. ‘I’m not getting out on this side.’
‘It’s deep, but clean.’
‘I’m not getting out.’
‘I can lend you some wellies,’ said Cooper. ‘They’re in the boot.’
‘OK.’
The path had been liberally sprinkled with droppings by the sheep that watched them pass, their eyes unblinking, their jaws moving rhythmically. The ewes had recently been shorn, and the red splotches of their owner’s mark showed clearly on their sides. Some still had lambs with them, a few months old now, but not yet ear-tagged.
‘Make sure you stay on the path, Diane,’ Cooper called as Fry began to lag behind.
‘Why, are the sheep dangerous?’
‘No, the ground is.’
Cooper smiled to himself as he climbed another stile. Fry had at least remembered him telling her how dangerous cows could be when they had calves with them. But sheep were different.
‘The signs are warning about dangerous mineshafts. There must have been lead mining around here. The shafts get covered over, and sometimes you don’t see one until you’re right on top of it.’
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Cooper realized he was talking to himself. He turned to see Fry still near the last stile, with an expression of disgust on her face.
‘What’s the matter?’
She was looking at her hand in horror, as if it had turned into an alien object on the end of her arm. She bent over and began to wipe it vigorously on a patch of damp grass.
‘Oh, God, it’s sheep shit,’ she said. ‘There’s sheep shit on the top of this wall, and I put my hand right in it.’
‘Sheep? Are you sure it isn’t bird shit?’ said Cooper.
‘I don’t care what kind of shit it is. It’s on my hand.’
Cooper waited for her, wondering whether he ought to offer her a clean handkerchief or something, like a gentleman in a Jane Austen novel. But he didn’t carry a handkerchief. He might have a few crumpled Kleenex tissues in his pocket. He started to look for one, but Fry had already found her own and was gingerly stepping over the stile, without using her hands.
‘I was just saying …’ he began.
‘Stay on the path. I know.’
Cooper walked carefully through the grazing sheep and reclining cattle, not even looking at them as he passed. They glanced at him and went on cudding. But Fry shied away from the first ewe she came near, and the animal did
