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‘No? Oh God, has this buggered up our rest time?’
‘Have you got some light there?’
Beardsley shone a torch on the figure. ‘Hey, that’s blood,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know that, Beardsley. Shine it on his face, will you?’
The torch beam moved, but failed to pick up a reflection where they would have expected white skin.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Beardsley. ‘What happened to his eyes? I can’t even see them for the blood. And his face is black. Has he been burned by the fire?’
Whittingham leaned a bit closer and took off his right glove. Avoiding the pools of blood where the eyes should have been, he touched a finger gently to the face of the dead man.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think he did that to himself.’
9 (#ulink_91bdd168-03ce-5bb3-91a3-c81fb884f8f2)
Sunday
Sunday mornings had become a battleground for Ben Cooper. It was like going over the top in the trenches every time they opened the doors. In the minutes of waiting, he could see the whites of the eyes of the people alongside him, and feel their tension rising. Five minutes to ten, and there was still no sign of anyone on the other side of the glass.
The first time he went to do his weekly shop at Somerfield’s supermarket on Sunday morning, he thought he would be the only customer. But he was far from being alone in wanting to shop at that time. There had been a small crowd waiting outside the doors.
After his first few visits, Cooper realized he was seeing exactly the same faces each week. There was the man with the denim jeans so baggy they surely must never have fit him, and the old woman with a knitted hat pulled tight over an explosion of white curls. And then there was the little man with the walking stick and bent legs, who moved slower than everyone else and needed a shopping trolley to keep him upright and mobile.
Soon, members of this group had started saying ‘hello’ to him when he arrived, as if he’d been accepted into some sort of club. Each of them had their own little rituals once they got inside the store. Some browsed among the fresh vegetables, or rushed to be first in the queue at the delicatessen counter. Some headed straight for the cat food, or did a preliminary circuit to spot the ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ offers. Occasionally, they would pass each other in the aisles and complain that something had been moved again. There was always a small traffic jam by the cabinets where the frozen meals for one were kept.
When an assistant manager finally appeared and unlocked the doors, Cooper stood back to let most of the Sunday-morning crowd grab their trolleys and get in before him. The little man with the stick reached the doors last, as always. Cooper was just about to follow him, when his mobile phone rang. He pulled it from his belt and checked the number on the display. It was one he didn’t recognize. Work though, probably.
For some reason, the idea that the office was calling him on his rest day irritated him more than it ever had before. Previously, it had never seemed to matter. But now, the interruption of his Sunday-morning routine was different. It could upset his entire week. Sunday was for shopping, cleaning the flat or doing some ironing, a quick lunch, then an afternoon with the papers and TV before visiting his mother. Then he would finish off with an evening in the pub, where the usual crowd would be expecting him, and his usual drink would be on the counter almost before he got through the door. Even within three months, the routine had developed a reassuring predictability.
Cooper let the phone ring a couple more times as he pushed a trolley into the first aisle: fresh fruit and vegetables. In a second, the answering service would cut in, and he could pretend that he had been unavailable. Then someone else would have to take on whatever job it was they wanted him for. He wouldn’t even know what it had been until Monday morning. He wouldn’t know whether it had been something trivial, or the most exciting case of his life.
‘Oh, well,’ he sighed, as he caught the call before the next ring.
‘Hello, Ben. It’s Tracy Udall.’
Cooper had a moment’s difficulty in putting a face to the name. But then a picture of PC Udall in her body armour seemed to materialize in front of him, among the piles of carrots and parsnips.
‘Morning, Tracy. What can I do for you?’
‘I thought I’d mention that I’m on duty tomorrow, and I’ll be going up to Withens again in the morning.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m going to talk to the Oxleys. Or try to.’
‘Good luck, then.’
‘I’ll be setting off from Glossop section station about ten o’clock.’
‘I’m working tomorrow myself,’ said Cooper, trying to puzzle out what Udall was talking about. He had only been on loan for the day of the raid. There was more than enough work to be done in CID at Edendale, even on a Monday morning.
‘Fine,’ said Udall cheerfully. ‘See you around.’ And she rang off.
Cooper shook his head as he put his phone away. But it wasn’t worth worrying over. He had fruit and vegetables to think about.
He began to fill a plastic bag with apples. Just up the aisle, the man with the stick was poking a finger at some enormous oranges that looked as though they’d been pumped up with steroids. The old man liked to trail round the aisles with Cooper whenever possible, so that he could talk to him. This morning, he was deliberately lingering in the fruit section to allow Cooper to catch up. The man with the stick never bought oranges. He was a tinned peaches and pineapple chunks man.
Then Cooper’s phone rang again.
‘What now?’
He couldn’t let it ring for long this time. He saw that the number was one of the direct lines into E Division headquarters at West Street.
‘Ah, Cooper. I didn’t think you were going to answer.’
‘No, sir,’ said Cooper, recognizing DI Paul Hitchens’ voice immediately. ‘I mean, yes. I just had a bit of difficulty because my hands weren’t free.’
‘You’re not driving, are you?’
‘No, sir.’ Cooper tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear as he pushed his trolley past the apples and drew up to the dairy cabinets. He heard Hitchens take a breath.
‘Look, I’m sorry to bother you on your rest day, but something has come up, which you need to know about before you come on duty in the morning.’
‘A case, sir? Have we got an incident?’
‘Well, not exactly. We’re loaning you out again.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The Rural Crime Team were very pleased with you yesterday. They’ve asked if they can have you for a while longer. Apparently, they have some more enquiries coming to a conclusion.’
‘Oh, but sir –’
‘The RCT are flavour of the month at the moment, you know. Rural crime has a high profile, so it’s getting priority treatment at higher levels. You know what I mean.’
‘So you’re agreeing to an abstraction, sir?’
‘For a while, Cooper. We’ll see you back here before long, no doubt. You’ll have all this rural crime cleared up in no time. I’ve got every confidence in you.’
Cooper picked up a milk carton and stared at it blankly. The confidence of your senior officers was good. But Hitchens sounded a little too confident for Cooper’s liking.
‘How long will it be for?’
‘Well … I don’t know exactly. Not at the moment. But we’ll see how it goes.’ He paused. ‘Nothing to worry about, Ben,’ he said. ‘DS Fry will be keeping in touch.’
‘Is everybody happy with this, sir?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Hitchens. ‘Everybody’s happy.’
Diane Fry sat stony-faced, trying not to show how the news was affecting her. Inside, she felt as though her heart had dropped suddenly into her stomach. For a moment, the clematis flickered into flames, and the cat turned yellow eyes towards her as a shadow fell across its window.
‘Well, it goes without saying that I’m not happy,’ she said.
‘We all have to bear the brunt of abstractions,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘We benefit from them too, when we need them. You have to look at it from a management point of view, Diane.’
‘I can’t see the sense of this one.’
‘The Rural Crime Team say they have some major ongoing enquiries that are coming to a head. They requested assistance, and they’ve got it. End of story.’
‘I’m not happy, sir. We’re already understaffed, as you know.’
‘Of course. But what’s new?’
‘And the abstraction is in effect from when?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Damn.’
For a while, Fry had wanted rid of Ben Cooper. She had even seen him as a threat. But that seemed a long time ago now. Instead, she was feeling aggrieved at the idea that she was going to lose him. Maybe more than aggrieved.
‘How were the Renshaws, by the way?’ said Hitchens.
‘Difficult. I don’t think they’re ever going to accept the possibility that their daughter is dead. They’re living in a fantasy world, in which they expect Emma to turn up home at any moment. That makes it very hard to talk to them.’
‘Mrs Renshaw has gone a bit nutty, I’m afraid. And she doesn’t realize it. We call it the Daft Old Biddy syndrome around here. DOBs, they are. Daft Old Biddies and Daft Old Blokes. We get plenty of them phoning the station. The control-room staff are like saints.’
‘I could use a few saints,’ said Fry. ‘All I have is Gavin Murfin.’
The man with the walking stick recognized a sympathetic listener when he saw one. He had news of crimes to pass on to Ben Cooper every week, even though he could have no idea that Cooper was a police officer. Most of his stories were culled from the newspapers, and were therefore inaccurate. But, occasionally, he had one of his own from the Edendale neighbourhood of Southwoods, where he lived.
‘Do you know, some of the old girls up my way won’t open their doors to anybody now, except Meals on Wheels,’ he said as Cooper tried to squeeze past him by the dairy products. ‘They’re too frightened, see. They had another lot of those blokes round the other day, who pretend to want to check your gas supply for leaks. So some old dear lets them, because she’s worried about being gassed during the night, or her bungalow blowing up. Then one bloke keeps her talking, while the other goes through the house and pinches her purse and stuff.’
‘Distraction burglaries,’ said Cooper.
‘It’s disgusting. It’s always the old folk they go for, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘It’s because they think we’re all stupid. Mind you, some of those old dears are stupid.’
‘They target anybody who’s vulnerable,’ said Cooper.
‘I’m not vulnerable. They have to show me identification if they want to get in my house. And I phone the council or whatever to check they’re who they say they are. They don’t like it, some of them, but I make them wait.’
‘That’s very sensible.’
‘And if I ever see one of them make a wrong move, I’ll clobber him with my stick.’
‘That’s not so sensible.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, first of all, you might get seriously hurt if they hit you back.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘And you might find yourself on a charge of assault, if you use unreasonable force.’
‘I don’t care about that either.’
‘If you have any suspicions, the best thing to do is to call the police.’
‘Bollocks. What would they do? They don’t turn up until long after the buggers have gone, and then all they want to do is give you a number to claim on your insurance.’
Cooper’s mobile phone rang for a third time when he was in the frozen food section, jostling with his fellow shoppers for the pick of the items from the refrigerated cabinets.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ he said.
A woman standing nearby, with her trolley nudging his, gave him a funny look. He had noticed her before. He always seemed to encounter her in the frozen food aisles, where their trolleys had a regular rendezvous.
He answered the phone, and heard another familiar voice.
‘Oh, it’s you, Diane.’
The woman with the trolley chose that moment to lean past him towards the frozen Chinese meals for one.
‘Sorry,’ said Cooper as he moved out of the way.
‘Ben, is someone there with you?’ said Fry.
‘Oh – just someone wanting to get into the freezer.’
‘To what?’
The woman was waving a packet at him. Spicy noodles.
‘I find these very good when you live on your own,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Oh, thanks.’
Fry’s voice was as chilly as the air rising from the lid of the freezer cabinet.
‘What’s she doing now, Ben? Offering you an ice cube?’
‘Some noodles.’
