‘No.’
Villiers smiled. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of the way things work here. I thought there might be a bit more freedom to use your own initiative, but maybe not. It’s okay, it’s what I’m used to. But still
…’
‘You think I ought to do something about it,’ said Cooper.
‘It’s not for me to say. You’re a newly promoted DS, you want to keep your nose clean. At least until you’ve got your feet properly under the table. I understand that.’
Cooper looked at her. ‘It was one of the things that held me back for so long, my tendency to act on feelings, to follow an instinct when all the evidence pointed in a different direction. Otherwise I might have been a DS long before now.’
Villiers said nothing. But he could see from her face that she was disappointed in him. He couldn’t help that. This case was starting to irritate him.
‘One thing I really don’t understand is this obsession with Sheffield,’ he said. ‘Why does everyone keep talking about Sheffield? It’s as if they might be able to shift responsibility for a problem by pointing a finger at the nearest city. I’m telling you, Sheffield is just a distraction. It means nothing.’
Down the room, Luke Irvine had answered a phone call, and looked across at Cooper.
‘Ben, there’s a reporter downstairs from the local paper.’
‘The Eden Valley Times?’ he said. ‘They want a press officer, then. There’s someone in the building, Luke. Try the incident room.’
‘No, she wants to speak to a detective involved in the Riddings case. She thinks she might have some useful information to pass on.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘That’s what she says.’ Irvine pointed at the phone. ‘Does the address Sheffield Road mean anything to you?’
17
As she passed through the corridors of E Division head quarters towards the end of Friday afternoon, Diane Fry felt like a ghost. It was as if there were people here but she couldn’t see them. And, of course, they couldn’t see her. She was only a dim memory to them, a presence forgotten in every way but for her fading signature on a file.
In the CID room, she saw a woman talking to Ben Cooper. A woman who seemed at home, occupying a desk that had once been hers. She guessed this must be the new DC.
At least Cooper had tidied himself up a bit. Maybe becoming DS had done that for him, or perhaps the serious girlfriend, the little SOCO with the dark hair. When she’d first worked with Cooper, Fry had stifled a constant urge to tell him to straighten his tie, push his hair back from his forehead, get rid of that boyish look.
She’d always thought of Cooper as the social-worker type of police officer – the sort who thought there were no villains in the world, only victims; that people who did anything wrong must necessarily be in need of help. When she arrived in Derbyshire, he had obviously been well settled and popular, with friends and relatives around him, helping him out, smothering him with support. And preventing him from standing on his own two feet, the way she did herself.
But when she looked at him now, from beyond the doorway, Fry could see that the change in him went deeper than she’d thought. There was a different set to his shoulders, a firmer tone to his voice, and a new confidence in his eyes as he gazed around the room. He had the air of a prince surveying his domain. So he was maturing. She’d never really noticed it before.
And another thing. What was it that she detected in his manner when he spoke to the new woman? A fleeting expression, an exchange of glances, a suggestion of familiarity in the body language.
Fry’s eyes narrowed. She’d known there was a fresh addition to the E Division CID team. No one had bothered to tell her, of course. That was so typical. Before she’d gone to Nottinghamshire for the working group, she’d just overheard their DI, Paul Hitchens, say something like when the new DC arrives. And he’d given a meaningful nod towards one of the empty desks.
Now the new DC was here. Fry managed to hold her tongue for a while so that she didn’t look as if she was desperate to know about her. Then she turned to Gavin Murfin.
‘So who’s the new girl?’
‘Carol? You mean Carol Villiers, the new DC, I guess.’
‘Where has she come from?’
‘She’s ex-military. RAF Police.’
‘Really?’
Murfin smiled. ‘Apparently she’s a friend of Ben’s, from way back. An old school pal.’
‘Oh.’
‘From what I’ve seen of her, she seems great.’
‘I’m sure she is.’
The reporter’s name was Erin Byrne. She was one of the senior staff at the Eden Valley Times – though that wasn’t saying much, in Cooper’s experience. The turnover in the editorial department of the Times seemed to be very rapid, as anyone with two or three years’ experience moved on to better things. And for reporters on Edendale’s local paper, ‘better things’ didn’t necessarily mean the excitement of Fleet Street. It often meant a move into public relations, or the press office at Derbyshire County Council.
Byrne was dark and angular, with a soft Irish accent that made Cooper think of some rural county in the west of Ireland. Galway or Mayo. She was dressed all in black, like a high-powered businesswoman. One of those destined for a career in PR, perhaps.
‘We’ve been getting these messages,’ she said. ‘At first we didn’t take any notice. We get our fair share of loonies, you know.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
She smiled. ‘Some of them complaining about the police, of course.’
‘So what did these messages say?’
‘It’s a male caller. He claims his call is connected to the Riddings murder inquiry, and he says, “Tell them Sheffield Road.” He’s called three times now.’
‘Just Sheffield Road?’
‘That’s what he said. The trouble is, he’s been put through to a different person each time he’s called, and we all wrote him off as a nutter. It was only when someone mentioned it that we realised three of us had received similar calls. Mine was the most recent one.’
‘And they were all exactly the same?’
‘It certainly seems to have been the same man each time. He sounded as though he was calling from a phone box somewhere, too. Probably had an idea that we might trace his call. People get exaggerated ideas of what journalists can do.’
‘ Tell them Sheffield Road. That’s it?’
‘Well, my call was a bit different. He was getting cross by then. He didn’t like being passed from person to person, and thought we weren’t taking him seriously.’
‘Which you weren’t.’
‘True.’ She laughed. ‘Anyway, when he got me, on the third occasion, he was very unhappy. Maybe because I was female, I don’t know. He might have thought he’d been fobbed off with the secretary or something. He ended up slamming the phone down. But before he did, he said he would put it in writing.’
Cooper’s ears pricked up. ‘And has he?’
‘Not yet. Are you interested?’
‘On its own, the message doesn’t seem to mean anything.’
‘It didn’t to us, either. But I thought there might be some significance in the context of the inquiry. I mean, you must have gathered a lot of information that we’re not aware of. There might be a significant detail that you
