moment when she felt something, a brief response that was more than the deadly worthlessness she’d been feeling for the past few weeks. Rick Shepherd wasn’t the greatest thing she’d ever met. But he was there, he was available, and she had his attention.
He took another drink, laid a hand on the table, toying with a coaster. He frowned, seemed to search for a line of conversation. Perhaps he was as unaccustomed to this as she was. He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but that meant nothing. People slipped them on and off like raincoats these days. And many couples chose to live together for years without bothering to marry. He could have a partner back in Leicester. Would he tell her, if she asked? Did she want to know?
‘We’ll be merging soon anyway, I guess,’ he said.
‘Will we?’
‘Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, maybe a couple of others. It’s inevitable, sooner or later.’ He shook his head. ‘I know it would save millions of pounds on headquarters costs and all that. But I’m starting to think it would create too big an organisation.’
‘Really?’
Fry thought of West Midlands Police, the force she’d moved from when she came to Derbyshire. With almost thirteen thousand officers and staff, it was bigger than Notts, Derbyshire and Leicestershire combined.
‘Maybe some people don’t know what big is.’
‘You know, the East Midlands region is growing faster than elsewhere in the country,’ he said.
Okay. Now she had her ID. He’d been wearing a different tie today. In fact, he’d taken it off altogether when they came to the pub. But the words were identical, and the tone of voice was the same. The exact tenor of complacency and laziness, a lack of concern about accuracy and rigour. Just the sort of qualities she hated.
Fry finished her drink and stood up. Her companion hastily drained his beer, picked up his jacket and his phone, suddenly eager to leave. They walked back towards the pub car park together, and stopped when they reached her Peugeot. Rick leaned casually on the roof.
‘I’m sure we could work closely together, you and me,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think? A bit of mutual assistance, Diane? I know a nice quiet spot in Sherwood Forest where we could explore our personal merger options. I can promise you I always come up to my performance targets.’
He was standing a bit too close now. Well inside her personal space. Fry felt herself tense. It was that instinctive reaction she couldn’t control, an automatic response of her muscles triggered by a suppressed memory. She always knew it would happen. But she couldn’t explain the reason for it, not to someone like Rick Shepherd.
He was close enough now for her to smell the beer on his breath, the deodorant clinging to his shirt. She was frozen, her limbs so stiff that they hurt. A long moment passed, when neither of them spoke or breathed. Just when it seemed that nothing would happen, he made his move. And Fry felt his hand touching the base of her spine.
The shriek went on and on. In Cooper’s mind it was a despairing wail, the scream of a dying victim. A call for help he was unable to respond to.
‘Oh God. Which house is it?’ he said. ‘Can you see?’
‘It might be nothing. A false alarm.’
‘Do you really think so?’
You couldn’t easily pin down the direction of a burglar alarm. It was one of those elusive noises. Its high- pitched shriek bounced off everything – the houses, the trees, the rock faces of the edge. Cooper stared apprehensively down at the village. He was looking for the telltale red flash of the light on an alarm box. He felt an anxious sweat breaking out on his forehead despite the cold wind.
‘Can you see it? Carol, can you see where it’s coming from?’
‘No.’
‘Nor me. Damn.’
With shaking fingers, he used his phone to alert the control room – though there were units in the immediate area who ought to be responding even as he began to make the call. Thank goodness he was on top of the edge, and within signal range.
‘There are people running,’ said Villiers when he finished the call.
‘Where?’
She pointed. ‘Over there, behind the trees.’
‘That’s on the other side of Curbar Lane. Yes, it must be The Cottage. It’s the teenagers’ party at the Chadwicks.’
Voices drifted clear on the air now from the village. Screams, shouts, a smashed glass, bodies crashing through undergrowth. Distantly a siren started – the two-tone wail of a police vehicle. Too distant, though. Why weren’t they in the village already?
‘How do we get down?’ said Villiers.
‘There’s only the old packhorse route. But for God’s sake be careful.’
‘You go first then. I’m right behind you.’
Their progress down the slope from the edge was frustratingly slow. The stone was uneven and dangerous, worn smooth and slippery in places by centuries of passing feet. Cooper cursed under his breath many times as he stumbled, or felt his feet begin to slide on the rock. He wished he could have gone faster, but there was no point in breaking an ankle or hurtling head first down the slope. An injured police officer was no use to anyone.
‘Be careful,’ he called at every corner or steeper section. ‘Carol, be careful.’
‘I’m being careful,’ she shouted back. ‘Would we have been better going back to the car?’
‘Too late now,’ said Cooper. ‘Too late.’
Finally the slope grew less steep, the ground levelled out, the track became more grass than rock. They were on the outskirts of the village, covering the rough terrain between the edge and the boundaries of the first properties.
But now they could see almost nothing – a dark wedge of trees directly in front of them, indistinct shapes further away in the dusk, a brief glimpse of a light from a window, appearing and disappearing among the trees.
Cooper was breathless now, his lungs burning and his legs tiring. He glanced over his shoulder to see Villiers still close behind him.
‘I’m not sure where this track comes out,’ he said.
‘Oh, great. I thought you knew where we were going.’
‘You know what?’ gasped Cooper. ‘I think I must be mad.’
‘No argument from me.’
Over a stile, they found themselves running through a field, passing a large property to their right.
‘This is Moorside House,’ said Cooper. ‘Tyler Kaye.’
A horse snorted in the dusk, and Villiers skidded sideways in surprise.
And then they were on Curbar Lane at last, emerging on to tarmac and stumbling to a halt. Cooper stared around, trying to regain his breath, clutching his phone in his hand but not knowing now which way to go. He could still hear the burglar alarm, but the sound was lost in the trees, less shrill and distinct than it had been from the edge. There was music too, loud and pounding, a background to many voices still screaming and shouting.
‘How many kids are at that party?’ said Cooper. ‘Has she invited the whole school?’
‘Maybe it’s on Facebook,’ said Villiers.
But at least there was a police vehicle, a marked response car at the end of the lane, with its blue lights flashing.
‘We’re responding to a call about an intruder,’ said one of the uniformed officers when he saw Cooper. ‘It’s a high-priority response in this area. They called out the cavalry.’
‘Which house?’ asked Cooper.
‘The Cottage, Curbar Lane. Name of Chadwick. But we can’t find it.’
‘It’s right there. You’ve probably got it as Nether Croft on the database.’
‘Okay, I see it.’
The officer’s radio crackled, and he acknowledged.
‘Air support is on scene,’ he said.
‘What? They were quick.’
