Dancing With the Virgins (52 page)

*

Ben Cooper ran along the auctioneer's walkway, distracted by the clanging gates and the movement of the cattle. He looked around, saw only rows of pens,
inquisitive bovine faces, damp concrete and cold streaks
of light from the broken roof. He could see no sign of
Diane Fry. All he knew was that his slowness had put
her in danger.

Outside, DI Hitchens would be organizing the troops
as paramedics arrived to take over the task of battling
for Todd Weenink's life. But for Cooper, there was no
time for waiting.

A market attendant saw Cooper and pointed towards
a passageway between the sale rings. At the end of
the passage, a pool of something dark and sticky was
trickling across the concrete into the drainage channel.

*

At first, Diane Fry felt no pain, just a strange kind of
exposed feeling to her face as the flesh parted under
the knife and cold air struck the tissues underneath. As
she backed away, the stinging pain started and the blood began to run down her face.

Maggie watched her. 'That was your fault,' she said.
'Now you'll be scarred, like me.’

Fry tried to wipe the blood away from her eye with her hand, but it trickled down her jawline and on to
her neck. Mentally, she had been prepared for it. But
physically, the sudden laying open of the skin still jolted
her body, and caused a shock to the nervous system
that twisted her stomach and drained the strength from
her limbs.

*

Ben Cooper had reached the fatstock sale ring. He stopped at the end of the passageway, with the high
steel bars of the ring between him and the two women.
'Armed police!' he shouted. 'Drop the knife!’

Both the women turned towards him, startled. Then
Cooper saw Fry fall as her leg gave way. She hit the
concrete, and her baton dropped out of her hand, rolling
under the seats at the edge of the ring.

*

Diane Fry could hear the panic in Cooper's voice.
Maggie looked towards Cooper and met his eye,
defiant. It was then that Fry recognized something in
Maggie's face. It was the most dangerous look of all -the look of somebody whose life was already over. If you had lost everything that you ever cared about, it didn't matter what else you did. It was all irrelevant. This was the way Maggie wanted it to go. She would
not drop the knife - she wanted someone to shoot her.

‘
Armed police! Drop the knife! Now!’

With a great effort, Fry hoisted herself up on her left
hand and kicked Maggie's feet from under her with her
good leg. Their limbs tangled together, and they both
went tumbling down the tiers of seats.

The two women lay in the sawdust, clutching each other like lovers. They sweated and gasped as they
stared into each other's eyes. Now she was so close, Fry
could smell the cigarette smoke in Maggie's hair, no
longer masked by the perfume. She could picture the
ashtray on Maggie's desk, alongside the telephone and
the letter opener, the only objects that had been import
ant enough to earn space on that pristine surface. And
Maggie Crew never had visitors to her apartment — so
whose was the cigarette ash? It was a question Fry had
never thought to ask.

Other armed officers had joined Cooper outside the
ring. They shouted more warnings. But they couldn't
fire now. They had no clear target — the women were
too closely entwined.

‘
This was how you felt, that night at the Cat Stones,'
said Fry. 'I know you, Maggie.’

Their faces were pressed against each other, Fry's mouth touching Maggie's disfigured cheek. But now she didn't flinch away from the scars. Their breath
mingled, and Fry felt their hearts beat hard against each
other.

‘
You're going to have to give me the knife or kill me,
Maggie.’

Maggie's hand moved, and Fry felt the touch of the
steel blade, sharp and cold. Maggie's grip on her neck
tightened.

It was a long moment, frightening yet exquisite, the
feel of this person in her arms. Fry closed her eyes,
unable to do anything to protect herself, or to prevent
what might happen. She was waiting. Waiting for the knife to cut her again; waiting for it to enter her body.

37

Derwent Court still had much of its original Victorian
guttering. The increasingly blustery winds that battered
around Matlock had swirled heaps of wet leaves into
the iron channels and downspouts, and now the rain was spilling over and cascading down the front of the
building. Ben Cooper had to dodge a waterfall near
the front door, wondering whether this was part of the
water treatment that the Victorians had once flocked to
the hydro to enjoy.

When Cooper joined the team in Maggie Crew's apartment, they had already emptied her desk, and papers littered the surface. DI Hitchens was working his way through them, and when he saw Cooper he offered him a heap.

‘
We found a rucksack back there in one of the bed
rooms with Ros Daniels' clothes and a few belongings
in. She was travelling light, by the looks of it.’

Cooper began to look through some of the papers.
Many of them were bills, bank statements, insurance
policies, all carefully organized and filed. There were
law books, a copy of Maggie's partnership agreement,
an address book packed with names. Who were all the
people in the address book if Maggie Crew had been
so alone? He turned over some leaflets about Hammond
Hall, and showed Hitchens what he found underneath.

‘
This looks like a diary of some kind,' he said. 'Or a
journal.'

‘Is it Crew's diary? We haven't found one yet.'

‘
No. It's just some times and places, almost an itiner
ary. It's from somebody called Eve. Who's Eve?
’

‘
I don't know.’

Cooper stopped and stared at the page. 'Oh,' he said.
'Grosvenor Avenue, Edendale. But that's —'

‘Mm?'

‘So who's Eve?' repeated Cooper.

‘No idea. A friend of hers?'

‘There's a phone number, anyway. It's a local number.'

‘Try it then,' said Hitchens.

Cooper looked uncertain. What he had read had thrown him. It wasn't what he had been expecting. 'What do I say?'

‘
You can think of something, Cooper. Just ask for Eve
and play it by ear.’

Still he hesitated, reading and rereading the bit about
Grosvenor Avenue. 'Shall I, sir?'

‘Go ahead.’

Cooper dialled. 'I'll tell her I'm selling something.
Nobody thinks there's anything unusual about that.'

‘
That's a good idea. So what are you selling?' said Hitchens as the phone began to ring.

‘Soffits.'

‘What the hell are soffits?'

‘
Exactly. Nobody knows. You can tell them any old
rubbish.’

Then the ringing stopped, and a voice answered. But
Cooper was speechless. He seemed to have forgotten
he was a salesperson. His opening line had gone right
out of his head.

‘
Sorry,' he said. 'Wrong number.' And he put the phone down.

‘Was it?' said Hitchens.

‘What?'

‘A wrong number?'

‘
Not at all. Very much the right number, I think.
’

‘
You didn't try to sell them any soffits.'

‘No,' said Cooper. 'They didn't need any.’

*

Maggie Crew seemed almost at home in the interview
room. Its sparseness suited her. She was able to live
with her own thoughts, staring at a blank wall as she
tried to recapture the elusive memories. Ben Cooper
listened, fascinated, as she talked about the triggers that
had achieved what nothing else could do.

‘It was the sounds and the smells that suddenly
brought it back to me,' she said. 'You could have sent
people to talk to me endlessly and you would never
have achieved that. The voices, the way the men smelled
of animals. And there were dogs barking somewhere,
but I couldn't see them . . .' Maggie shuddered. 'And then somebody screamed. One of the animal rights women.'

‘
And you'd just had it confirmed that Rosalind Daniels was dead,' said DCI Tailby.

She nodded. 'It was like something physical hitting
me. The memories poured over me. It was as if I was
existing in two places at once, at two different moments. The sounds and the smells connected them. And I knew
what had happened to Ros.’

Maggie put her hands on the table and looked at
them. Her long fingers were very still, her nails blunt
and pale.

‘
Ros had decided to trace me, you know,' she said.
'After all that time, my daughter decided to trace me.
They allow adopted children to get access to information on their real parents, but not the other way
round. It's one of the provisions of the Adoption Rules.
I don't know what she hoped to achieve by it.' Maggie paused and let out her breath. 'Yes, I do. She wanted
to get whatever she could from me. Money. A convenient place to stay.'

‘When did she first contact you?'

‘
Around the middle of September. She said she was
in the area, but she didn't tell me why or where she was living.'

‘
It seems she was staying with Jenny Weston at Totley
during that time.'

‘Yes, I found that out later. These animal rights groups have networks they communicate through. And when Ros arrived with nowhere to live, Jenny Weston offered to help. She had a spare bedroom in her house.'

‘
You know a bit about Jenny Weston, after all,' said
Cooper, recalling the efforts Diane Fry said she had made to bring Jenny alive in Maggie's mind.

But Maggie ignored the comment. 'Ros came on a
mission — a mission against dog-fighting. She was fol
lowing a link from the area she came from, somewhere
in Cheshire. When one dog-fighting ring was closed
down, some of the men began to travel to Derbyshire,
to Ringham Edge Farm. Of course, the dog-fighting was
much more important to Ros than finding her mother.
I was just a side interest.'

‘
That's not what she told her adopted parents,' said
Tailby.

Maggie shook her head. 'I expect she resented them,
too. No — she came with a purpose in mind; I was merely a useful accessory.'

‘
But Jenny didn't agree with what Ros wanted to do,
did she?'

‘
Apparently not. Ros was much more radical in her
views than Jenny. She believed in direct action. In fact,
she believed in violence.'

‘
And that's what led her into trouble in the end,' said
Tailby.

Maggie dropped her head. 'I suppose it has to be my
fault.'

‘Does it? Why?'

‘
Because there's no doubt she would have been raised
differently if I had kept her with me when she was a child. Well, that's obvious,' said Maggie. 'She would
never have reached that stage if I had brought her up
myself.'

‘
There's no reason to believe that,' said Cooper.
Maggie just stared at them and didn't trouble to dis
cuss it. 'Ros had an argument with Jenny Weston when
she found out what Ros intended to do. There were
angry words. And Ros walked out and came to me.
’

‘
How did you feel about that?'

‘At first I thought it was the moment I'd always
dreamed of,' said Maggie. 'My daughter had come back
to me. But it wasn't like that at all.' She looked from
Tailby to Cooper. 'Nothing ever is how you hope it will
be, is it? It's best not to expect anything. It's best not to
hope for too much. Because the worst thing of all is when you have your hopes raised and then dashed
again. That is very painful. That can be devastating.’

They gave her a moment to recover, while the tapes
recorded the silence.

‘
What did Ros want exactly?' asked Tailby.

‘
My daughter saw that she might be able to make use
of me.'

‘
But in what way?'

‘
She needed somewhere to stay, a handy base. That
was the way she put it. And my home was much nearer
to where she needed to be. Much nearer to Ringham
Moor.'

‘
Did she tell you what she planned to do?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘And what was your reaction to that?'

‘
Ironically, I think I probably reacted the same way
that Jenny Weston did, but more so. I told Ros she was mad, that what she planned to do was criminal
and dangerous. We argued terribly. Of course, I said
all the wrong things. A lot of stupid things. I expect it's
because I've never known how a mother is supposed
to behave. I've never learned by my mistakes how todeal with a daughter - so I made all the mistakes at once, in one blazing row. I told her I wouldn't allow her to do it.'

‘
I expect she didn't like you telling her what to do.’

Maggie smiled. 'That's rather an understatement. It
was obvious she was going to go to Ringham Moor, whatever I said. It became very personal, and all her
bitterness poured out. Mine as well, I suppose. But Ros
believed that I owed her a great deal. And I found I couldn't argue with her any more. Because she was
right,
you see.
I
owed her more than I could say, for having let her down.'

‘So you allowed yourself to be persuaded . .

‘Yes, from that moment, I was lost. I should have
stuck to my guns, locked her in the flat . . anything. I
can see that now. But she told me that if I was a real
mother I would understand what she was trying to do,
that I would support her in the one thing that was most important in her life. That if I was a real mother, I would
go with her. She said I was the only one who could help to keep her out of danger. That it was what a mother would do.'

‘And so what did you do?'

‘
What
could
I do?' Maggie shrugged. 'I went with her,
of course.’

Cooper looked at Tailby, but the DCI just nodded. He was a father himself. Cooper could only imagine
how difficult it was to stand by and watch your child
walk away from you into danger, when all your
instincts were urging you to keep them by you and
protect them. How much stronger must the feeling have
been in Maggie, who had only just discovered it? She
had finally found her child, only to face the prospect of
losing her again. There was no way that she could have
stood by and watched Ros walk off alone.

‘
Yes, I drove her up to Ringham,' said Maggie. 'We
were both so angry that we didn't speak a word to each
other in the car. I had driven right through Matlock before I even remembered to put the headlights on.
When we got to Ringham, we parked above the village
and walked up to the tower. Ros told me it was the
meeting point, where I had to wait until she came back
from the farm. I didn't want to just sit and wait. Waiting
was the worst thing. On the other hand . .

‘
Yes?'

‘Well, there are other instincts, too.'

‘
You couldn't bring yourself to be too closely involved in a criminal act?' said Tailby. 'Is that right?'

‘
All my training was against it, you see. All my
beliefs. How could I? I was taking such a risk already.'
Maggie's face betrayed a moment of appeal, a deep uncertainty. 'Do you understand?’

Cooper looked away from the appeal. That was the
crucial issue, in the end. Maggie Crew had waited at
the Hammond Tower, torn between fear for the safety
of her daughter and her horror at what Ros was doing
out there on the dark moor. She hadn't wanted to be there, but she couldn't leave. Two powerful instincts
had been battling inside her, and no doubt she had
paced backwards and forwards at the foot of the tower,
staring helplessly into the darkness, smoking cigarette
after cigarette. Cooper could picture the unfinished
butts tossed away, still glowing as they flew into the night. How many might Maggie have smoked during that time? Many of the cigarette ends would have
landed among the trees on the slope, in the deep under
growth. But not all. Some of them had landed on the
ledge below the tower.

‘And what exactly was it Ros intended to do? Did she tell you?'

‘
Oh, she didn't just intend to do it. She actually did
it,' said Maggie. 'She prepared her plan beforehand. She
had two home-made petrol bombs hidden behind some
loose stones in the wall of the tower. She had even collected some bits of rubbish and shoved them into
the hole — empty drinks cans, chocolate wrappers, you
know the sort of thing. She said nobody would bother
to look in the hole when they saw the rubbish. I suppose
she was right.'

‘
Well, almost,' said Cooper, thinking of Mark Roper
and his preoccupation with clearing up after other people.

‘
That makes me an accomplice,' said Maggie. 'I
knew what she intended to do, and I helped her to do
it. Technically, I'm guilty of conspiracy to cause an explosion.’

Neither of the police officers said anything. At that moment, it seemed the least of her concerns.

‘
Ros had put petrol in two Evian water bottles. I don't
know who taught her how to do that. But then, I don't know how she was brought up. I don't even know who
her adopted parents were. I don't know anything about
her at all, even though she was my daughter. I might
have been able to put that right, in time. But
they
denied
me the chance.'

‘Who do you mean by "they"?'

‘
The men at the farm. The dog-fighting people. They
killed Ros.'

‘Are you sure? Did you see it happen?'

‘I didn't see it. I heard it.'

‘Tell us.'

‘Something must have gone wrong at the farm. I
heard the first fire bomb go off, then the second, though
it wasn't as loud. But for some reason Ros didn't get
away as quickly as she meant to. The men came out of
the shed with their dogs and they chased her back up
the hill towards the tower. She was coming back to
meet me, and I was supposed to keep her safe. But she
never stood a chance. Oh, she might have been able to
outrun the men, to escape among the trees in the dark
ness. But there were the dogs.'

‘If Ros never made it to the tower . .

‘I remember hearing the voices of the men shouting. And the dogs barking and snarling in the dark somewhere. I didn't know what was happening, and I couldn't see anything. Then there was a scream —' Maggie stumbled to a halt. 'The only other thing I
remember is the man running at me out of the darkness,
and then the knife and the pain . . .' She looked at Tailby.
'What actually happened to her? Can you tell me?'

‘
Your daughter fell off Ringham Edge, very near the
tower. She ran off the top of one of the Cat Stones trying
to escape from the dogs.'

‘
I see,' said Maggie. She took a few seconds to digest
the idea, as if trying to fit it in with her mental picture.
'It's ironic, isn't it? It was all because of the dogs. It was
the dogs that she was trying to save.'