‘Oh, you did that, Becky?’ said Cooper.
‘Of course. Gavin had to call in somewhere on the way.’
‘And is there anything else you’ve done for Gavin?’
‘Yes, I checked with the hospital on the condition of the householder, Mr Barron. They say he’s on the critical list.’
‘In hospital-speak, that means they don’t think he’ll make it,’ said Murfin.
‘Thanks, Gavin.’
Hurst looked at the Barrons’ house for the first time, running a keen eye over the facade as if she was counting the windows and doors.
‘So it could be a double murder we’re dealing with,’ she said.
‘Very likely.’
A flash of colour caught Cooper’s eye. On the edge above Riddings, two climbers were clinging to the rock face. From here, their grip on the rock looked impossibly precarious. But inch by inch, foot by foot, they were making their way up towards the edge itself. The clang of karabiners reached him clear on the air.
The rock climbers who’d told him about Riddings Edge had mentioned that many of the routes up those gritstone faces had been given names that reflected a climber’s view of the challenges they presented. There was Torment, Hell’s Reach, Satan’s Gully, Demon Buttress. The message was pretty clear.
Those names alone would be enough to explain why this particular escarpment had become known as the Devil’s Edge. But this summer, they weren’t the only reason.
3
Detective Sergeant Diane Fry was starting to feel suffocated. And it wasn’t just the heat, or the airlessness of the conference room. The suffocation went much deeper. It was a slow choking of her spirit, the draining of life from her innermost being. In a few more minutes she would be brain dead. Heart dead, soul dead, her spirit sapped, her energy levels at zero.
And her bum was numb, too. This was purgatory.
Fry had spent the whole morning in Nottinghamshire Police headquarters at Sherwood Lodge. At the front of the room, someone whose name badge she couldn’t read was sticking Post-it notes on a sheet of brown paper that had been Blu-Tacked to the wall. The Post-its were all the colours of the rainbow, which apparently had some significance. A few of them had already moved position several times during the session, making determined advances or strategic retreats, like military units moving around a simulated battlefield. She supposed there was some kind of overall narrative to the present ation. It might even be explained in the handout she hadn’t read. But she’d lost track half an hour ago. Now she was losing the will to live. She could feel her eyes glazing over, a well- known clinical side effect of staring too long at yellow Post-it notes.
When the speaker turned his back for a moment to move another Post-it, she leaned towards the officer sitting next to her.
‘What is this kind of presentation called again?’ she whispered. ‘A Sellotape brainstorm?’
‘No. A brown-paper workshop.’
‘Of course.’
If she remembered rightly, her neighbour was an inspector from the Leicestershire force. Mick or Rick, something like that. They’d all had to do ten-second introductions at the start of the session. Tell us who you are and what you hope to get from today. Cue a bunch of po-faced lies.
‘The Sellotape comes at the end,’ said Mick or Rick with a conspiratorial smile. ‘When we fix the Post-it notes in their final position.’
‘I’ll be on the edge of my seat by then.’
‘You and me both.’
Fry sighed. She was almost starting to miss Edendale. Unlike Derbyshire Constabulary, their neighbours in Nottinghamshire had an extra assistant chief constable, whose sole responsibility was Strategic Change. And change these days meant cooperation between forces to save money. So here she was, in this conference room in Sherwood Lodge, forty miles from Derbyshire E Division and starting to feel nostalgic for the company of DC Gavin Murfin and his colleagues. She would never have thought it possible.
She wondered idly which she would prefer right now – a nice restful spell in the private hospital she’d seen on the other side of the trees as she came down the drive, or a visit to the pub a little way back down the road.
She caught Mick or Rick looking at her. He pointedly checked his watch, and made a gesture with his wrist suggesting the act of drinking. A soulmate, then. Or at least close enough for now.
‘Seven Mile Inn,’ he said.
‘I saw it. Just by the lights.’
These working-group sessions were supposed to be interactive. That meant she couldn’t entirely escape joining in. At strategic moments she had found herself blurting out phrases that sounded right. Methodical workforce modernisation. Greater interoperability. She tried to say them while other people were shouting out suggestions, so that her words were swallowed in the general verbiage. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest.
The frustrating thing was that she knew she could do this stuff. She could do it standing on her head, write the entire report for them if that was what they wanted. You didn’t get far in the modern police service without learning those skills. It was just that her heart wasn’t in it. This wasn’t how she should be spending her days, trapped in a stuffy conference room.
And then the facilitator said the words she’d been waiting for.
‘Okay, people. We’ll break for lunch. Please be back promptly at two.’
Some of the attendees had brought their own sandwiches. Packed lunches, like schoolchildren. There was a civilian, a techy type from an IT department somewhere in the region, who was drinking Coke through a straw while he listened to an iPod and scrolled through messages on his iPhone.
You would have thought they’d supply lunch, at least. But this was the age of austerity. No such thing as a free lunch. Whoever said that had got it dead right.
Fry wondered what the others had done wrong to be sent here. When she stood up, her body ached. Not just from the ordeal of sitting still for so long. She physically craved action.
Somewhere in the world, something must be happening. There must be people who needed her. Mustn’t there?
The village of Riddings had no pubs, and no shops. Not a sign of a cafe or a craft shop, or even a farmhouse selling fruit at the side of the road.
Yet Cooper could see that the place still attracted tourists. Perhaps they saw some quaintness in its narrow lanes and stone houses, or enjoyed the smell of horse manure. But the people who lived here clearly had no interest in tourism. Unlike other villages in the Peak District, they made no effort to encourage visitors. They provided no facilities, not even anywhere to park a car.
Driving through the centre of the village, he noticed a few smaller cottages standing on The Green, where a hand-written sign advertised horse manure at a pound per bag. But the only people he saw anywhere were women walking their dogs.
The lanes really were very narrow. Where cars were left parked at the side of the road, their offside wing mirrors had been folded in to avoid getting knocked off by passing vehicles. A lesson learned from experience, he supposed.
The property neighbouring Valley View was called Fourways. This one was probably worth barely a million. Through more black wrought-iron gates, a drive ran straight up to a double garage, and the house was below it, approached by a set of steps. It was much smaller than Valley View, maybe no more than three bedrooms. But the views alone would add a lot of value to the property.
On the way to the front door, he passed a window and saw a woman emerging from the kitchen and walking towards a split-level dining room. Through the kitchen door, Cooper glimpsed Shaker-style units, lit by a dozen spotlights. A cream Persian cat sat in a basket by the Aga. When it saw him, it gave him a look of pure
