‘You’re not covering the show this afternoon?’ he said.
‘Oh, Riddings Show? That’s today, is it? No, we don’t have time to cover things like that. We pay a village correspondent a few pennies to write down the names of all the winners. Names still sell papers, they say. If necessary, we give them a little digital camera so they can take their own photos, too. Much cheaper than sending a photographer out from Chesterfield. We don’t have our own snappers in Edendale any more.’
‘It’s the way everything’s going.’
‘Oh, I know. We get policing on the cheap too now.’
‘I won’t argue with that.’
‘Well, I’m sure there must be lots of things you should be doing. I bet some of the residents around here would be furious if they saw you sitting in the garden of the Bridge Inn having a drink with a journalist. They’d be writing to the chief constable in their scores.’
Cooper thought that was probably true. But right at this moment, he didn’t care.
Byrne got up to leave. ‘Will you report our conversation to your boss?’
Cooper hesitated. He couldn’t mention his contact with the press to Superintendent Branagh. He’d heard her berate other officers for the slightest communication with the media, or for taking their claims seriously. He would risk being tainted by the meeting.
‘I ought to.’
Byrne smiled. ‘There are a lot of things we ought to do, Detective Sergeant Cooper. Sometimes it’s much more fun doing the things we shouldn’t.’
When she’d gone, Cooper checked his phone for messages, then decided to stay for a few minutes to finish his drink.
He opened the copy of the Eden Valley Times and flicked through the pages, glancing at the photographs. He wasn’t interested in the lead story about the Savages. It wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t know, and might well fill his head with misconceptions and half-truths.
Halfway through the paper, just before the property section, were the pages of community news. What was going on in the villages, in other words. As usual, that seemed to be mostly WI meetings and summer fetes, tractor rallies and fund-raising garden parties. But there they were, underneath next week’s church services – a party of balsam bashers pictured by the side of Calver Weir. With their boots and waterproofs, packed lunches and water bottles, they looked ready for a happy day of non-native-plant destruction.
He peered more closely. The photograph was in colour, which ought to help identification. But this was the Eden Valley Times, and the colour register had been slightly off alignment when the page was printed. So everyone in the picture seemed to have a faint magenta shadow blurring the left side of their face. It was an odd effect, like looking at a 3D image without the proper glasses on. But Cooper recognised Martin and Sarah Holland, standing just to one side. Barry Gamble was over to the right, lurking close to a couple of Peak District National Park rangers who had posed in the foreground wearing red rubber gloves and clutching tall plants with pink flowers.
It was the expression on Gamble’s face that grabbed Cooper’s attention. Despite the off-register printing, it was clear that he wasn’t smiling for the camera like everyone else. He wasn’t looking towards the photographer at all. In fact, he had been caught in an unguarded moment as he waited for the click of the shutter.
In that second, Barry Gamble had turned his head to the right and was staring directly at the Hollands. And the look on his face told a whole different story from the accompanying piece on the benefits of balsam bashing. His expression was a mixture of loathing and triumph. He had the air of a man taking one last, gloating look at his intended victims.
19
Riddings Show was held on Froggatt Fields, right on the western edge of Riddings where it met the neighbouring village of Froggatt, another of the duke’s creations, known for its quaint seventeenth-century bridge.
The show was said to be an offshoot of the village cow club, but there were no cows present now. Small- scale livestock shows had become far too complicated and risky to organise. They were too bound up in red tape and form-filling, too constrained by DEFRA regulations, too exposed to the possibility of another outbreak of disease. Foot and mouth, blue tongue, BSE – they had all contributed to the decline. Many village shows had never recovered from last-minute cancellation, and insurance premiums were beyond the reach of societies with limited sponsorship. Cloven-hoofed animals had become an event organiser’s nightmare.
So Riddings Show had transformed itself into a more genteel August bank holiday occasion. Cooper expected there would be flowers, vegetables and handicrafts, with the only livestock being the ponies and riders in the gymkhana ring.
It had begun to rain on and off almost as soon as he’d left the garden of the Bridge Inn, and he needed his windscreen wipers as he joined the flow of traffic into the showground. When he drove through the gate on to Froggatt Fields, he was greeted by the smell of engine oil, and the chug of vintage farm equipment. There were a few nods to the show’s agricultural origins after all.
The marquees and stands had been set up in the lower field, separated from the river by a line of trees. At the far end, the gymkhana arena lay in a natural hollow. As Cooper walked down the slope from the parking area, a brass band was playing a medley of James Bond themes. Goldfinger, From Russia with Love. The grass in the parking area had been mowed, but not removed, so the cuttings lay everywhere in deep swathes. They wrapped themselves around the tyres of the car, and covered everyone’s shoes. He found himself wading through heaps of wet grass all the way down to the show ring.
He stopped for a moment to watch a children’s entertainer in a sparkly blue jacket, who was talking to a dummy Afghan hound. The dog didn’t answer, except by whispering in his ear. What did you call a ventriloquism act where the dummy didn’t speak? He had no idea.
Cooper turned away. There were already too many people whispering to each other in this case. Why didn’t everyone say out loud what they thought? It would make life so much easier. His life, anyway.
Carol Villiers was already on the showground. She was dressed off duty, in jeans and a T-shirt, with a jacket tied round her waist. She looked every bit the outdoor girl, the sun bringing out the colour in her face. Out in the sunlight, between showers, Cooper noticed how pale her eyes were. Sandy, as if they had been bleached in a desert climate.
They walked towards the long canvas marquee, where signs announced that it had just opened to the public after judging.
‘I’ve heard you’re engaged, Ben,’ said Villiers. ‘Congratulations.’
Astonished, Cooper turned and stared at her as if she were a witch. Psychic, at least.
‘I haven’t told anyone here about that yet,’ he said.
‘Well, someone has.’
‘Blast. I didn’t expect it to get round so quickly.’
‘It’s one of the perils of having a relationship with a colleague,’ said Villiers. ‘I should know.’
‘I suppose so.’
Cooper realised this was going to take some getting used to. Once his engagement was announced, and was out in the public domain, it became real.
Inside the marquee, the long rows of tables looked spectacular. They were lined with all kinds of produce, from bottles of red sloe wine to jars of runner bean chutney. The scone classes seemed to have been particularly popular, and some of those extravagant flower arrangements must have taken many hours to create. Someone had even embroidered butterfly species around a cottage scene.
Cooper saw that the band was a local one, from Hathersage. Mostly middle-aged men, dressed in red jackets. Though a bandstand had been set out for them, they were playing inside the produce tent to avoid the rain. One of the musicians had stored his tuba case under a trestle table covered in mammoth cabbages and strings of onions.
‘My brother used to be in a brass band,’ said Villiers. ‘Soprano cornet.’
‘I’d forgotten you had a brother.’
