and women you were responsible for.
But now there was an extra dimension – a shadow in her eyes, a darkness behind the professional facade. He’d noticed it straight away when DI Hitchens had brought her into the CID room in Edendale this morning. He’d looked into her eyes and seen a different Carol Parry. Part of that darkness might be explained by the loss of her husband. And perhaps there were other experiences, too, that she would be unwilling to talk about.
Cooper wondered if she was still the ‘work hard, play hard’ type. It seemed to go with the territory, when he thought of the squaddies in garrison towns getting drunk and picking fights with the locals. They came back from a conflict zone and needed to let off steam.
But Carol had served as an MP. It had been part of her job to control those drunken squaddies, surely? Or whatever their equivalent was in the RAF. That had to be good practice for dealing with some of the customers they scooped up for a spell in the custody suite.
‘I was aiming to come to E Division anyway, if I could,’ said Villiers. ‘But they moved my posting forward a bit, in view of the major inquiry you’ve got on here. I guess I was lucky to get in just before recruitment was frozen.’
‘We’re glad to have you,’ said Cooper. ‘Very glad. Especially right now.’
‘A detective sergeant, then? I always knew you’d get on. Nice to have you as my boss, Ben.’
‘Are you up to speed? Do you know what’s going on here?’
‘Yes, I’ve read the bulletins. Not to mention the news papers. It’s causing a lot of media attention, isn’t it?’
‘All these stories being put around are just frightening the public,’ said Cooper, shaking his head. ‘It’s making everyone unnecessarily paranoid. We ought to be calming the mood down, not allowing it to be whipped up.’
‘You can’t do anything about stories on the internet,’ said Villiers. ‘It’s unpoliceable. Like gossip over the garden wall, there’s no way of stopping it. Facebook and Twitter just make the stories spread all the faster.’
‘I know. But when people get as jumpy as this, something bad is likely to happen.’
‘Really?’
Cooper started the car and drew away from kerb.
‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘There’ll be some idiot who decides to take the law into his own hands, and a random passer-by will get hurt. It’s inevitable, the way things are going.’
At Valley View, E Division’s Crime Scene Manager Wayne Abbott had just completed a full review of the Barrons’ security systems.
Cooper introduced Abbott to Villiers, and asked him whether the Barrons had a monitored alarm system. False alarms had become so common that most police forces no longer attended call-outs from non-monitored systems, unless they also had first-hand indication of a crime in progress, either from the owner of the property or a member of the public. An alarm signal routed via a monitoring centre was a different matter.
‘Yes,’ said Abbott. ‘They have a monitored twenty-four-seven response system. There’s an external system panel, and a decoy siren box. A door entry system on the gate. Intruder alarms, passive infrared motion sensors, CCTV. They did pretty much everything they could.’
‘I thought most burglars avoided properties with an alarm system,’ said Villiers.
‘That’s because they don’t understand them, or don’t know how to do deal with them.’
‘So these were professionals? They knew how to disable the alarms?’
‘No,’ said Abbott. ‘They didn’t bother with that. They chose the other option. The one that’s only available if you’re completely ruthless and foolhardy.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘They came into the property before the alarms had been set. Simple when you think about it.’
Villiers looked at Cooper. ‘But that could only have been when the occupants were at home, and before they’d gone to bed, too. They must have known people would be around.’
‘Exactly, Carol,’ said Cooper. ‘They didn’t care if they were seen by the family. They came in fully prepared to use violence. Probably planned it that way.’
Abbott called back as he walked away: ‘Like I said, ruthless and foolhardy.’
‘You get an idea of what we’re up against now,’ said Cooper.
Villiers looked grim. But she wasn’t shocked, didn’t start talking about how horrible it must have been for the family. Cooper wondered what she might have seen elsewhere that made the incident at Valley View seem unshocking.
He took her inside the house, walking carefully on the stepping plates left by the scenes-of-crime team. Now that many of the crowd had left, it seemed very quiet inside Valley View. The windows were closed, and no sound penetrated from the garden. There was no birdsong, no sigh of the wind through the trees, no clang of karabiners from the climbers on the edge. It was good double-glazing, maybe even triple. The outside world was just that – sealed out.
Inside, Cooper found that every movement he made was deadened against the carpet, every dash of colour flattened by the stark white walls. It felt unnatural, and uncomfortable. He was used to entering houses where a TV set was babbling constantly in the background, a dog was barking in the yard, a couple of children crying upstairs. Noise and life. Funny how the two seemed to go together. But this place was like a morgue. A chapel of rest, waiting for the next body.
He turned to Villiers. ‘Seen enough?’
‘Yes.’
Outside, they paused, and Villiers squinted against the sun as she looked up.
‘And that – that’s the edge?’
‘Of course. Don’t you know the edges at all?’
‘I’ve never been up there. It’s funny, when I grew up not far away. But I suppose you take these things for granted. You tend to think they’re just for tourists. So I’ve only ever seen them from down here, and never so close. Standing on the ground looking up, that’s me.’
She seemed to have become thoughtful. Cooper wished he could tell what she was thinking. He supposed they would have to get to know each other properly all over again. There might be things she didn’t want to talk about. But now that he was her supervisor, he had to be there and ready to listen in case she did want to talk. It could be a bit of a minefield.
Villiers looked at him, and smiled.
‘Will you show me the edge sometime, Ben?’ she said.
Cooper raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Of course, if you want me to. Have you got a pair of boots?’
‘Are you kidding? I was in the military. Of course I’ve got boots. And don’t start worrying about my fitness, either – I’ll race you up that slope any time. What is it like up there?’
‘It’s a whole different world,’ said Cooper.
Villiers lowered her hand and touched him gently on the arm.
‘I’ll look forward to you showing me, then.’
Across the garden, Cooper saw a cluster of SOCOS in their blue scene suits. They were well away from the house, but had set up a route marked off by crime-scene tape. They had put an aluminium ladder against the high stone wall that formed the boundary on that side of the Barrons’ property. One of the SOCOs was over the ladder and examining the far side of the wall.
Cooper approached cautiously, not wanting to get in the way. Wayne Abbott saw him and held up a hand to stop him getting any closer.
‘What have you found?’ asked Cooper.
‘Handprints. Two white handprints on the wall.’
‘White?’
‘Two prints, clear as day,’ said Abbott. ‘They look almost as if they’ve been made in chalk.’
‘Good work.’
Watching the SOCOs at work photographing the wall, Cooper fingered his bag of stone chippings, deep in thought. What sort of person left white handprints? It didn’t make sense.
But then, that was par for the course. Nothing the Savages did made sense either. Only in some twisted logic of their own, anyway. They were fearless and audacious. And no one knew where they would strike next.
Lane End had a drive of freshly laid gravel, thick and crunchy under the Toyota’s tyres. Two convex mirrors
