‘Great.’
‘Mind you, I’m used to carrying a Browning nine-millimetre. An extendable baton doesn’t quite feel the same on the hip.’
As they reached the top of the moor, Villiers gazed across the valley that opened up to the east.
‘I was trained not far from here, you know. Until the training school moved down south, we were based at RAF Newton in Nottinghamshire. We used to have a Hawker Hunter at the entrance, as our gate guardian.’
‘Over the river, then,’ said Cooper. ‘I think I know the site. The buildings are an industrial estate now, though. The airfield itself has gone back to being arable land. They grow oilseed rape.’
‘Shame.’
She hesitated. ‘I keep saying “we” and “us”, don’t I? I keep forgetting I’m not in the RAFP any more. When you’ve been a member of a tight-knit unit for so long, it’s hard to make the break. Especially if you’ve served in a conflict zone. You learn to depend totally on your mates, to watch each other’s back. Being part of a team under pressure, there’s nothing like it.’
‘I understand,’ said Cooper.
‘That’s why so many leave the services and find it impossible to adjust to civilian life. They suddenly find there’s no one to watch their back, no mates to depend on. No buddy at their side.’
Cooper could think of nothing to say. He could tell from the catch in her voice that she was no longer talking just about her colleagues in her unit, but about a much more personal loss. It was a loss that she might never recover from, no matter how often people told her that time was a healer.
‘You might not think so yet, Carol,’ he said, ‘but we can be like that too. A close-knit team. People you can depend on to watch your back.’
She smiled. ‘Thanks, Ben.’
In the distance, Cooper saw the antlers and head of a stag outlined against the moor. The animal itself stood motionless, listening. Its ears were erect, its nostrils quivering. What was it listening for? What scent had it detected? Could an animal sense the presence of evil on the moor?
‘How long were you actually in the services?’ asked Cooper as they reached the edge. ‘It can’t be more than – what? Nine years?
‘Yes. The standard contract.’
‘It seems such a lot to have crammed into nine years.’
‘Well, that’s the armed services for you. You never know what you’re going to be doing next, or where you’re going to be posted. It’s not like being a copper in sleepy old Derbyshire.’
She smiled, and Cooper knew he didn’t have to tell her that it wasn’t like that. But he said it anyway.
‘It can get quite exciting,’ he said. ‘Some of the time, anyway.’
‘From what we hear in the media, all you do is fill in paperwork for an entire shift.’
‘So Snowdrops spend their off-duty time reading the Daily Mail, do they?’
‘Oh, and I forgot – maybe the odd spell of planting false evidence, too.’
‘Well, that’s true.’
They began to trudge back towards the edge. As he walked through the expanse of reeds and cotton grass, Cooper noticed the way the distant rocky outcrops seemed to change shape. They slid slowly sideways, merged and divided, their outlines shifting from smooth to jagged to a distinctive silhouette.
It was all the effect of altering angle and perspective. With each step, a transformation took place in the landscape, a gradual reveal like the slow drawing aside of a curtain. At a point halfway across the flats, a split rock he hadn’t noticed before came into view. As it emerged from behind a larger boulder, its two halves slowly parted and turned, like the hands of a clock creeping past noon.
Of course, his logical mind told him that he was the only moving object in this landscape. It was his steady strides across the flats that were causing the change in perspective. But his senses were sending him a different message. With no nearby landmarks, and in this peculiar light, the effect was deceptive. Despite what he kept telling himself, it really seemed to be the rock that was moving.
Some people studied these rocks in minute detail, mapping the strata and analysing their structure. Cooper supposed it was important to understand the geology, to explain in cool scientific terms how these eastern edges had come into existence. That was one way of dealing with their presence. But he couldn’t help feeling that a logical approach took away the mystery. Didn’t analysis always destroy romance, and drain the life out of poetry? Why not just stand and gaze, and let the imagination wander? He preferred the edges this way – wild, and full of magic.
‘Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘You mentioned it once, but…?’
Villiers stared out over the valley. ‘Yes, we were both in Afghanistan. We were there for two months, instructing new Afghan police recruits in Kabul. That was fairly uneventful, actually. There are lots of other duties that people never get to hear about back home. Back in 2002, Glen was injured in Cyprus, during demonstrations against a new radio mast at RAF Akrotiri. He got a commendation from the Provost Marshal for that.’
Cooper waited, knowing there was more, but not sure of the right question to ask, or even if he should be asking.
Finally Villiers spoke again, more quietly. Cooper had to strain to catch her voice, before her words were swept away in the wind blowing across the Devil’s Edge.
‘But then he went back to Afghanistan,’ she said. ‘Two years ago, he was shot and wounded in Helmand Province, when Taliban insurgents opened fire on his patrol one night. He died from his injuries before they could fly him back home.’
They stood silently together for a few minutes as the light faded and dusk settled on the valley. Riddings was directly below them, and Curbar could be glimpsed in the south.
Northwards, the village of Froggatt lay below its own gritstone edge. The main part of the village was on the other side of the A625, with a tiny, ancient stone bridge that crossed the river to reach the Grindleford road. That bridge must have stood on another packhorse route, Cooper felt sure. Probably the route that snaked up the slope behind the Chequers Inn and zigzagged to the top of the rock-strewn edge. It was a steep track, worn into ruts over the centuries by the hoofs of the laden horses. It boggled the mind to imagine how they had managed it. Cooper had always thought it was difficult enough going down without losing your footing, let alone carrying a couple of millstones. Those packhorse men must have been tough characters.
Where were the packhorse trains heading when they went over the edge and crossed the moor? Towards Chesterfield. And, of course, to Sheffield. They carried grindstones for the city’s steel and cutlery manufacturers.
Tonight, mist hung in the valley bottom, masking the lights of the villages. As with any of these edges, the best light was in the evening, as the sun started to descend in the west and bathe the stones with warm light. Cooper liked to wait to see the afterglow, then walk back to experience the moors in the dark. There was nothing like starlight and moonlight, and there was plenty of it up here on the edge. As long as you tried to ignore the orange glow from Sheffield in the east.
On the slopes below the edge, the houses of Riddings and its neighbouring villages were taking on their own distinct shapes in the dusk. Tonight they looked like frightened creatures crouching in the hollows of the hillside, an occasional light winking on and off as if a cautious eye was opened to check for danger.
Cooper pictured the inhabitants huddled inside their homes. For some reason, the image in his mind resembled an illustration he’d seen once in a children’s history book – a primitive tribe of Homo sapiens crouching in their caves around smoking fires, their shadows thrown on to rock walls decorated with drawings of wild animals.
It must be so difficult, sitting in your home, or lying in your bed at night, knowing you were a potential victim. How did you run your life with the knowledge of lethal danger lurking outside the door? You huddled together in that primeval instinct for safety. It was the same fear that cavemen must have felt, listening to wild beasts crashing through the forest at night, picturing in their minds those unseen terrors in the darkness beyond the cave. A completely primitive dread.
There was one thing Cooper did know – the Savages didn’t belong in a village like Riddings. They belonged up here, on the moor. They were, after all, wild beasts who walked on two legs.
‘Carol,’ he said, ‘have they shown you how to access the PNC and use the intelligence system?’
She looked at him in surprise, her mind no doubt following a completely different train of thought.
