Dancing With the Virgins (5 page)

*

The atmosphere on the moor was gloomy. It made Ben
Cooper feel almost guilty about the buzz of anticipation
that had stayed with him even in the car with Todd Weenink. The entire stone circle had been taped off,
and lights were being set up to illuminate a small tent
in the centre. More tape created a pathway as far as a
gorse bush a few yards away. The tape twisted and
rattled in the wind with a noise like a crowd of football
supporters half-heartedly encouraging their team.

‘
There was an inch or two of rain during Thursday
night, but it had dried up by morning,' said Cooper.
Several faces turned to stare at him. Hitchens raised
an eyebrow, but Tailby nodded.

‘
Well, the ground was fine for lifting the sugar beet
that morning,' explained Cooper. He drew a finger
through a hollow on the top of one of the stones. 'On
the other hand, there hasn't been enough sun since then
to dry the moisture out where it's sheltered from the wind.
’

He became suddenly aware of the nature of the
looks he was being given. 'It's what you asked me,' he
said
.

Hitchens shrugged. He was wearing an old rugby
jersey over his jeans, and might once have played for
the divisional XV until he became senior enough to be more at risk of injury from his own side than from the
opposition.

‘
Could Stride be a name?' he asked.

‘
What kind of man would leave his name written in
the dirt when he had committed a murder, anyway?'
said Tailby. 'And these stones . . .'

‘
The Nine Virgins,' said Cooper.

‘
What are they all about?'

‘
They're the remains of a Bronze Age burial chamber.
But local people call them the Virgins because of the
legends . . .'

‘
How old?
’

‘
Three and a half thousand years, give or take.'

‘
The last virgins in Derbyshire, then,' said Hitchens
.

Cooper kept his mouth shut. He watched a SOCO
scoop up a tiny patch of bloodstained earth where the
body had lain, while he listened to the faint laughter
drop hollowly into the wind and disappear with a scat
ter of dead leaves
.

*

In a short while, no doubt, a detective superintendent
would arrive from another division to take over as senior investigating officer. He would be grumbling
about the continuing vacancy in E Division that meant
he had to be dragged away from his own patch, where
there would be several other major incidents to be dealt
with as well
.

But this was the second attack on a woman in a small
area, and this victim was dead. Panic would be setting
in at higher levels, and those being kicked by the chiefs
would soon- be kicking the dog
.

Though he knew Ringham Moor well, Ben Cooper
found the area around the Nine Virgins disturbed him
in a way it had never done before. The atmosphere was
all wrong. There was nothing dark and claustrophobic
about this murder scene, unlike so many others he had come across. Very often a killing occurred within a close
relationship, usually within the confines of a family, where emotions ran high and someone was finally
driven to extremes. Here, though, the feeling he got was
of space and timelessness, a place where everything ran
to its natural sequence, just as it had done for thousands
of years. Here, the slow dance of the seasons repeated
itself endlessly on an almost empty stage as nature
rolled from life to death and back to life again.
Cooper had learned to keep quiet about his thoughts
at times. Most senior officers, like DCI Tailby, prided
themselves on being practical, logical men. Tailby was
from Nottingham, raised in suburban streets and com
prehensive schools. He preferred to leave it to people
like Ben Cooper to be imaginative - he seemed to regard
it as some kind of local idiosyncrasy, a queer character
istic inherited from the distant Celtic ancestors of the
Derbyshire hill folk
.

Cooper watched his fellow officers. Some of them
certainly looked as though they felt disorientated and
isolated from the realities of the twenty-first century up
here. As if to emphasize the point, the sound of a steam
train starting up seemed to reach them from the valley
below.

‘
There's the train,' said Cooper.

‘
What?' said Tailby.

‘
It's the Peak Rail line. They run restored steam engines on it. For the tourists, you know.
’

A white plume hung across the lights in the bottom
of the valley, drifting with the breeze back towards
Matlock and vanishing into the darkness as the chug
of the engine receded
.

Tailby spun on his heel. 'Time to talk to the Rangers,'
he said.

‘
We'll need to get proper lights set up here, you
know,' said the Senior SOCO, 'if you really want photos
of that inscription.'

‘
Believe me,' said Tailby, 'I want
everything.'

4

The young Ranger looked vaguely familiar to Ben
Cooper. But then, he knew lots of Ropers - one of
them had been his Maths teacher at school, another ran the garage on Buxton Road; and he had once arrested a Roper for indecency. They were all certain to be related
.

Mark was a tall young man, with wide shoulders that didn't quite fit the rest of his body. His muscles
had some catching up to do, but he was wiry and fit.
Cooper noticed he had a small streak of vomit staining
the front of his red Peak Park Rangers jacket. Somebody
at the Partridge Cross Ranger Centre had made him several cups of tea. The tea had done nothing for his pallor, but at least his kidneys were working at full capacity. He emerged from the loo just as the police arrived
.

Mark sat down unsteadily when DCI Tailby introduced himself and opened the questioning.

‘
I was patrolling the moor,' said Mark. 'Ringham
Moor. I was on the path from the east, going towards
the Virgins.'

‘
That's the stone circle.'

‘
It's just one of the stone circles. But it's the one that
everybody knows.'

‘
All right.'

‘
I was near the Virgins when I saw a bike.'

‘
Hold on. Before that, did you see anyone else on the
moor?'

‘
Nobody at all. It was quiet.'

‘
Nobody? Think right back to when you first left the
centre.
’

Mark looked automatically towards the window. Cooper followed his gaze. A silver Land Rover with a
thin red stripe was parked outside. Beyond the Ranger
Service sign on its roof, the dark hump of the moor was
still visible against a pale sky.

‘
There was a man working in a field on this side of
the moor, mending gates. I've seen him before. There
was no one else.'

‘
OK. Describe this bike,' said Tailby
.

Now Mark seemed to regain a bit more confidence.
He produced a small notebook from the pocket of his
fleece and turned the pages. But he spoke without looking at his notes. The scene was still fresh enough in his
mind.

‘
It was a yellow Dawes. I recognized it as one of the
hire bikes. It had been chucked into the bottom of a
gorse bush, in the middle of some birch trees. One of the wheels was off too. I thought somebody had hired it and had an accident and just left it. They do things
like that.'

‘
Who do?'

‘
Well, you know - the visitors. Tourists. They just
leave a bike somewhere and say it's been stolen or they've lost it or something. You wouldn't believe the lies some of them tell.'

‘
Did you touch the bike?'

‘
No.'

‘
You're quite sure about that, Mark?'

‘
Yeah. I just looked for the number. Because I thought
it was one of the hire bikes. And it was, wasn't it?'

‘
Yes, it was.' Cooper could hear the gratification in the DCI's voice. The fact it was a hire bike had made
it so much easier to identify the victim. She had been
obliged to leave her full name and address and proof of identity at the cycle hire centre when she took the bike out earlier that afternoon. So they had already
established that her name was Jenny Weston, that she
was thirty years old and divorced. She worked as a
customer service manager in a large insurance office in
Sheffield, and had taken a week's holiday because she
had several days' leave to get in before the end of the
year. By now, her parents had already been contacted,
and her father was on his way to identify the body formally. If only it were always so easy.

‘
Then I saw something lying in the middle of the
Virgins,' said Mark. 'I went to have a look. Although -'

'Yes?'

‘
Well ... I could already see what it was. I could tell,
from a few yards away, from where I found the bike. It was a woman. And she was dead.
’

Mark moved his hands restlessly, brushing the front of his fleece. Cooper thought at first that he was trying
to rub off the vomit stain, but realized he was wrong
.

The young Ranger was stroking the badge stitched to
the fabric, fondling as if it were the breast of a lover,
tracing the silver letters and the stylized millstone sym
bol of the Peak Park.

‘
Did you notice anything about the body?' asked Tailby
.

Mark hesitated. 'Only that she was, you know . . .'
His hands made half-hearted gestures. 'Her clothes . . .'

'You mean her clothes had been interfered with?'
Mark nodded.

‘
And did you notice anything else nearby? Anything
unusual or out of place?'

‘
No.'

‘
So how close did you get to the body, Mark?'

‘
I walked as far as the nearest stone. The flat one. I
didn't have to go any closer.'

‘
You were quite sure she was dead?'

‘
Oh yes,' said Mark. 'Oh yes.
’

Mark suddenly went a shade whiter. His hand went
over his mouth, and he made a dash for the loo. A second later, the police officers heard the sound of vomiting
.

DCI Tailby sat for a moment longer, as if still listen
ing for elusive bits of information in the Ranger's retching.

‘
Cooper, find that Area Ranger,' he said. 'He knows
the lie of the land round here, if anybody does. Tell
him we need to arrange proper access to the moor. We
need the owner of the land or whoever. And we need to get into that quarry, too. Get on to it.'

*

Ben Cooper found the Area Ranger waiting by his silver
Land Rover outside the briefing centre. Owen Fox was
in his early fifties, with grey hair and a thick beard that
was going the same way. He was a comfortable badger of a man, with an even more comfortable smell of wool
and earth.

‘
Mr Fox?
’

The Ranger turned, with a distracted air. Though
Cooper was wearing his dark green waxed jacket over
civilian clothes, he thought Owen would recognize him
as a policeman. People always seemed able to tell. They
said it was something to do with the look in your eyes.

‘
Can I help?'

‘
I'm Detective Constable Cooper. If you've got time,
I'd like to call on your local knowledge.
’

Cooper explained that he had been given the job of
opening up access to the disused quarry and of securing
the route for vehicles to get to the crime scene.
'We need to see Warren Leach then,' said Owen.
'And he is . . . ?'

‘
Ringham Edge Farm. He owns most of the moor.
The old quarry road runs across his land. We can go in
the Land Rover, if you like.
’

The farm was reached by a back road out of the
village of Ringham Lees, an almost invisible turning by
the corner of the Druid pub. A group of a dozen or so
youngsters were hanging around in a bus shelter near
the pub. When they saw the lights of the Land Rover
coming, two teenage boys ran across the road directly
in front of its bonnet and stood laughing and waving from the opposite pavement.

‘
Some of these young people,' said Owen. 'Their
common sense has left home before them. And it didn't
give a forwarding address.'

‘
We get a lot like them in Edendale,' said Cooper.
'I bet you do.
’

The Ranger had four radio sets in the cab of the Land
Rover. The wide-band set under the dashboard was
constantly scanning the channels for the Ranger Service
and other local organizations. Another set was for the
Mountain Rescue team. Behind the seats, fixed to a wire
grille, were two battery-operated handsets on permanent charge for when they were needed. Cooper saw that there was also a satellite positioning device in a leather case. But the best-used piece of equipment
seemed to be the vacuum flask. It was battered, but no
doubt a welcome sight on a freezing day on the moors.

‘
Some of this technology is all right,' said Owen. 'But
we'll be completely computerized one day. I only hope
it's after my time. I was brought up to think "online" meant your mum had just put the washing out.
’

Cooper laughed. 'Did you say this Leach owns the moor?'

‘
Part of it. It's all privately owned, one way or
another. The PDNPA doesn't own any land, you know. Being a national park doesn't mean what people think
it means.'

‘
No, I know.'

‘
But Ringham Moor is one of those places where the
landowners have an access agreement with the national
park, so Rangers are involved a lot. Especially with the
attention the Nine Virgins get. They seem to have a
special significance at the summer solstice — a bit like
Stonehenge, you know? There can be two hundred or
so people gathered up there — illegally, I might add,
under the access agreement; not to mention the by-laws
covering ancient monuments.'

‘
But what do they get up to exactly?'

‘
Oh, you wouldn't believe it. Music, jugglers, camp
fires. Children and dogs running round. It's a bit like
a medieval fair. One year we had to call in a mountain
rescue team to carry off a young lady who'd been danc
ing from stone to stone, but fell off and broke her leg.
Every year I pray it will rain — it keeps things quiet for
a change.'

‘
So much for the peace and quiet of the Peak District.'

‘
Peace and quiet? One of our biggest jobs is looking
after the safety of visitors. None of them have any common sense. If we left the fences off the old mine
shafts, half of them would throw themselves in, think
ing it was a new visitor experience.
’

Owen Fox had a direct gaze and a sly smile in his eyes
when he made a joke, though his face hardly moved. It
took a bit of careful listening to understand when he was joking.

‘
I wouldn't want to work anywhere else, though,' said Owen. 'I've even picked the exact stone where I want my ashes to be scattered.
’

They passed a large field containing a herd of black
and white cattle and approached Ringham Edge Farm
down a steep, narrow lane constricted between stone
walls. The farm buildings were built mostly of the dark
local gritstone, and the house itself had small, deeply-set
windows that must let in little light. An extra shadow
was thrown on the house by a large modern shed some
distance from the track. Close to the shed stood the
burnt-out shell of what looked like a Mitsubishi pick-up,
the paint stripped from its bodywork and the interior
of the cab blackened. Many farmers had the habit of
letting all sorts of junk accumulate around their farm
buildings
.

Owen glanced at Cooper. 'Would it be best if I talked
to him?'

‘
Leach? Is he likely to be difficult?'

‘
He can be. He needs handling right. Sometimes you
have to let people think they're getting their own way.
’

‘
Even when they aren't?'

‘
Well. Sometimes. You do know, don't you . .
'What?'

‘
It was Warren Leach's wife Yvonne who found that
other woman a few weeks ago.'

‘
Of course — Maggie Crew.'

‘
She got as far as one of the fields at Ringham Edge.
Yvonne Leach came across her lying unconscious under
a wall. Leach himself just reckoned it was a nuisance,
I think. It kept him away from his work for a bit. But
this old quarry road is mainly used as a footpath now. It's a public right of way, and it runs right through the
farm. When you have strangers walking past your door
all the time, you can soon get to see them as an irritation.
Some visitors think farmers are there as a public service,
for providing toilets and telephones, or for pulling their
cars out of ditches with their tractors. I can't blame Warren — not really.
’

When Owen Fox and Ben Cooper pulled up in the
Land Rover, they found two boys in a brightly lit byre.
They were fussing over a Jersey heifer calf with huge
eyes and long black lashes. The animal stood patiently,
twitching her damp nostrils with pleasure as she was
brushed on each flank until her red coat gleamed. One of the boys reached out to stroke the calf's muzzle, and
she responded with a rasp of a plump tongue across his hand which made the boy smile with pleasure.
Behind them, a wooden board was decorated with red
and blue rosettes with long ribbons.

‘
Is this the calf that won at Bakewell Show?' asked
Owen
.

The boys looked uncertain what to say. Maybe they
had been told not to talk to strangers, thought Cooper.
But the Ranger wasn't really a stranger, was he? He
had been to the farm before; he knew Warren Leach. It
was part of the Area Ranger's job to maintain good relations with the farmers and landowners on his patch.

‘
Yeah, this is her. She's called Doll,' said the older boy.

‘
You're Will, aren't you?' said Owen. 'I can't remem
ber your brother's name.'

‘
He's Dougie.
’

Owen walked slowly towards the calf, hushing her
quietly as she shied away and rolled her eyes at him.
The boys held on to the halter nervously. But the animal
calmed down when Owen began to talk to her, stroking
her nose, gently following the lie of her coat along the side of her muzzle. He rubbed her shoulder to feel the
firmness of the muscle and ran his hand down her spine.
The calf relaxed under his touch.

‘
She's a beauty, lads. In superb condition. She's a real
credit to you.'

‘
Thanks,' said Will. Dougie appeared to be about to
add something, but changed his mind
.

Both boys seemed shy, but the younger one was
particularly uncommunicative. Cooper wasn't used to
silent children. There were several kids of Will and
Dougie's age in his own family — nephews and nieces
and second cousins. But none of them was so quiet.
They were too noisy, if anything. These days, children
were no longer seen and not heard. It was when you
could neither see
nor
hear them that you began to worry,
if you were a parent. That was when they were at risk
.

But these two were different. They had a reticence
about them, a watchfulness that bordered on hostility,
as if they had learned to be afraid of visitors.

‘
Will you be showing her again next year?' asked Owen
.

That seemed to have been the wrong thing to say. The boys' faces fell, and Dougie looked as though he might cry.

‘
Your dad will take you to the show, won't he?
’

Will shook his head. Now Cooper started to feel uncomfortable. 'Where is your dad?' he said.

‘
Up at the workshop.' Will pointed to the back of the house. The two boys looked relieved when they walked
away and followed the roadway to a yard, where a metallic clanging came from a shed. Owen stuck his head through the doorway.
'Warren? Good evening.
’

Warren Leach looked up from a bench lit by a dim work-lamp. He was a man with almost no neck. His
torso, thick and solid, without a single curve, erupted
into bulging shoulders with trapezius muscles that
almost reached the line of his jaw. He was wearing blue
overalls, with a wide leather belt strapped round his waist.

‘
Oh, it's you,' he said gruffly. 'It never rains but it pours round here, does it? What do you want?'

‘
Well, it might have been a friendly social call,' said
Owen
.

Leach snorted. 'Oh aye. Did you come past the shippon?'

‘
We did.'

‘
I suppose you saw those lads of mine. Are they still
messing with that bloody animal?'

‘
They look as though they're doing a grand job with
her, Warren. She's in fine condition.'

‘
Oh aye. Fine. And so she should be. The animal gets
spoiled rotten. She's fed better than any of us.
’

The farmer was fiddling with a steel coupling pin
from a trailer's towing bracket. The pin trailed a short length of chain, which he swung irritably between his
fingers.

‘
What's up now then, Ranger?'

‘
Warren, the police need to get access for their vehicles up through here for a while.'

‘
Oh?'

‘
On account of the woman killed up there. You know
about that.
’

Leach shrugged. 'It's no business of mine.'

‘
It's your land, Warren,' said Fox patiently.

‘
Is it part of the access agreement then? Some tourist
gets herself done in and I have to put up with this
lot roaring backwards and forwards over my land like
maniacs?' Leach jabbed a finger in Cooper's direction,
effortlessly identifying him as what he was. 'Well, it
must have been in the small print, Ranger, because I
missed it.'

‘
Can you leave that top gate open for the police vehicles to get on to the moor, please?'

‘
Leave it open? Why? They can open and close a gate
like anyone else, can't they? Or have coppers lost the
use of their hands as well as their feet these days?'

‘
It doesn't do to make the police think you're being
obstructive,' said Owen.