Dancing With the Virgins (54 page)

*

Half an hour later, Diane Fry emerged from DI Arm
strong's office knowing that she had burned her boats. It was a curiously satisfying feeling. Armstrong had not
been pleased at her decision not to take the job with
her team. But Fry knew it hadn't been right for her. Not
now.

Sisters. It was that one word that had finally repulsed
her. She had no sisters here. Not Kim Armstrong, nor
any of her associates. Not Maggie Crew, nor any of the
other women she was obliged to be polite to during the
course of her job. They were not sisters, not even friends — merely acquaintances, or colleagues. It was the claim of sisterhood that she could not stomach, that made the
bile rise in her throat.

Fry opened her bag and slipped the creased photo
graph out of her credit-card holder. She had only one
sister, and this was her. This young woman would now be a stranger, as unrecognizable to Fry as the homeless
druggies of Sheffield were. Their relationship was a
dead thing, a fragment of the past, yet still remembered
and treasured.

Carefully, Fry put the photo back. The things that people craved were so strange. The longing for what would do you no good at all was utterly incomprehensible.

Sisters? Like daughters, sisters were something special, not to be taken lightly. No, ma'am. You were not Diane Fry's sister, and you never would be.

38

At
one time, there had been far more prehistoric
remains on Ringham Moor than there were now. But
local people hadn't always seen the value of their
ancient monuments. Stones from the henges and burial
chambers had disappeared over the years, to be built
into the dry-stone walls that separated the moor from
the fringes of the farmland. It was ironic, now, to see the vast heaps of unwanted stone that lay in the abandoned
quarries.

Reaching the top of the slope, Ben Cooper turned and
reached out a hand. Diane Fry hesitated, then took it,
accepting his help over the last bit of the hill.

‘Are you all right?'

‘
A bit stiff, but exercise is what I need,' she said.
'If you're sure.’

They had both needed the fresh air. Cooper had been
shut up in the office for much too long, struggling to
make sense of a mountain of paperwork, the grinding
anticlimax that always followed the conclusion of an
enquiry. He knew Fry had been imprisoned in her dis
mal flat, with only the walls to look at and her own thoughts for entertainment. Cooper had intended to
arrange a day out walking with his friends, Oscar and
Rakki. But instead he had found himself asking Diane
Fry. No doubt it was another mistake. He hadn't done
much that was right recently.

‘
Maggie Crew will get the appropriate psychiatric
treatment,' he said. 'Appropriate to her condition.
’

‘
That's good,' said Fry. 'I suppose.'

‘
She had lost the ability to relate to the world. It's just
that there was nobody close enough to her to notice.’

They were two hundred yards from the Nine Virgins.
Cooper could feel the first real chill of winter creeping
across the moor, insinuating itself into his clothes and
settling on his spirits. So many things had changed since
the beginning of the month. Autumn had passed in a
glance, the wind stripping the trees, baring their thin
branches to the sky. The rain that had fallen in the last
few days had turned the leaves underfoot into a black
sludge, slippery and treacherous, full of worms and pale, wriggling insects.

‘Bloody screwed-up women,' said Fry. And Cooper
saw her smile, but he turned away quickly so that she
wouldn't see him noticing.

Mist lay in the valley below Ringham, long tendrils
fading the colours of the hillsides and the trees. As the
sun rose on the valley, it reflected from the surface of
the mist, creating a pale bowl of light, from which the
tower of the church in Cargreave emerged like the battlements of a drowned castle.

Yesterday, Cooper had heard that Owen Fox had resigned from the Ranger Service. He had decided to make way for a younger man, it was said. Cargreave
Parish Council was advertising a vacant seat, but there
was no competition to fill it — a candidate favoured by
Councillor Salt and her ruling group would be co-opted
to make up the numbers. The house in Main Street, with
its wonderful view from the kitchen window, had a 'For Sale' sign outside.

‘What
is
that tower?' asked Fry, gazing across the dying bracken to Ringham Edge.

‘They call it the Hammond Tower. It's named after
some member of an aristocratic family, the people who owned Hammond Hall. The Duke built it so that every
one could see it for miles around. A symbol of his own
power and importance, I suppose.'

‘
It's where Maggie's daughter was supposed to meet
up with her on the day she was killed.'

‘And it's where Maggie came back to. She hadn't
given up hope that Ros would reappear, even long after
she was dead.’

Cooper looked at Diane Fry. She was too thin, and
the wound on her cheek had turned red and did nothing for her looks. She was arrogant and infuriating, too. But
sometimes she seemed to know what was right.

‘
Maggie Crew left her cigarette ends there,' he said.
'But Mark Roper cleared them away.'

‘Another obsessive.'

‘All the time you spent with Maggie Crew, Diane. Did you not realize she smoked Marlboro?'

‘No.’

They began to walk towards the stone circle. Their
feet crunched through the leaves as if they were walking
through three inches of fresh snow. Cooper walked
slowly, to let Fry keep up. But at the edge of the clearing
around the Virgins, he stopped.

‘Diane —'

‘Yes?'

‘
The transfer. It's all fallen through, has it?
’

‘
Looks like it. But another job will come up.
’

‘
Sure. Welcome back, anyway.'

‘
What?'

‘
I always thought you were one of the team, that's all.’

Fry shook her head in total disbelief. 'Ben, you are
such a prat.’

That's what Helen Milner had said to him too, though
in different words. There was an awful lot of work for
him to do if he was to stand a chance of rescuing any
of his relationships.

Cooper pulled a lump of fungus from the trunk of a
birch. It was one of the white, obscenely shaped ones, but now it was starting to darken and decay, releasing
tiny, soft spores into the air.

‘
Who was it you were looking for, Diane? In
Sheffield?’

Fry jerked as if he had kicked her injured leg. 'How
the hell do you know about that? Is my private life public knowledge now? Why do you have to pry into things that don't concern you?'

‘It's my nature, I guess. I'm sorry.’

Fry sighed. 'If you must know, it was my sister,' she
said.

‘Your sister? The heroin addict? But I thought you hadn't seen her for years.'

‘Sheffield was where her friends said she'd gone when she disappeared.'

‘I didn't know that.'

‘Why the hell do you think I came here? Did you think I
wanted
to live in sheep-shagger country? This was the closest posting I could get to Sheffield.’

Cooper nodded, not wanting to argue just now. 'And
have you found her?’

Fry grimaced. 'I don't think Angie is there. I'm looking in the wrong places. Angie would never let herself
get to the same state as those people I saw. She is my
sister, after all.’

The clouds had closed down on the horizon and
settled on the high tops to the north, where visibility would be pretty well zero, so close that you would be
lucky to get a glimpse of your own boots in the heather.
Cooper held the fungus gingerly towards Fry. She
barely glanced at it, as if used to his peculiarities now.
But she wrinkled her nose and turned her face away.
Then he threw the fungus into the heather and wiped
his fingers on a tissue. He was right — her sense of smell
was perfectly good enough to detect cigarette smoke.

‘
Have you heard of Eden Valley Enquiries?' he said.

‘
A firm of second-rate enquiry agents? Divorces and
process-serving, that sort of thing. I think they have an
office in one of those small business centres on Meadow
Road.'

‘
That's right. Discreet confidential enquiries. No ques
tions asked. I rang them the other day.'

‘
Yeah? Looking for a new job, are you? Thinking of
joining the private detective business?’

Cooper shook his head. 'No. I was thinking of trying
to sell them some soffits.’

Fry stared at him. 'Ben, have you completely flipped?'

‘
It was something we found at Maggie Crew's place.
It had the name "Eve" and a phone number. We
thought it was some friend of hers. Only it wasn't Eve,
a person; it was EVE, in capitals. It stands for Eden Valley Enquiries.'

‘Yes? Is there a point?'

‘
Well, there were some other details, a sort of journal.’

They had almost reached the Nine Virgins. The tape
had gone now, and the public had been allowed back
into the stone circle. Someone had laid a bunch of flowers against the base of one of the stones, where Jenny Weston had died.

Cooper took his notebook from his pocket. 'Do you
want to hear it?' he said.

‘If it will make you feel better.'

‘
It says: "Left place of residence in Grosvenor Avenue
21.10, travelled by car to Sheffield. Parked in multi
storey car park in The Moor and proceeded on foot to
railway arches near junction of Shrewsbury Road and
Dixon Street.' Cooper paused. 'There's a lot more. Do
you want to hear it?'

‘No.'

‘It goes into quite some detail, on two separate occasions. And it ends with an unfortunate incident
involving a confrontation with one of their operatives.
’

‘
So Maggie had me followed.'

‘The name of the subject isn't actually mentioned,' Cooper pointed out.

‘But why would she do that?’

Automatically, Cooper counted the stones. Some legends said that you could never count the Virgins,
because they always moved before you got to the last
one. But today there were definitely nine. Nine, plus
the stone that stood away from the rest, on its own. The
Fiddler.

‘
It was how she traced Jenny Weston,' he said. 'EVE
located Jenny's home in Totley for her. Then they had
an operative track Jenny's movements - he was seen
by at least two of the neighbours. He followed her,
and recorded her habits. Unfortunately, Jenny made the
mistake of going to the same place too often.'

‘Here. Ringham Moor.’

Cooper nodded. 'So Maggie knew exactly where she
would be going that day, and she set off to meet her on the moor.'

‘But surely it must have occurred to Eden Valley Enquiries after Jenny was killed -’

He shrugged. 'Discreet and confidential. No questions asked.'

‘
Jesus. I'd string them up and break every bone in
their bodies.'

‘
You did a decent job on one of their operatives, by
all accounts. For someone with an injured leg.’

*

Diane Fry recalled the memories that Maggie Crew had
eventually produced for her tape. She had thought at
the time they seemed confused, a mingling of more than
one memory dredged from the depths of her mind. Now it occurred to her that Maggie might have been
producing them solely to please her interviewer. At the
next meeting, perhaps, she would have reached the criti
cal moment, a shared trauma that would have bonded
them permanently. She would have told of the rape
twenty years ago - the rape that had left her pregnant
with a female child that she hadn't wanted. Unlike Fry,
Maggie's beliefs hadn't allowed her to take the abortion
option. But Fry hadn't let her reach that point. She hadn't needed Maggie Crew any more, or so she had thought.

‘Diane,' said Cooper, 'what's the secret of keeping your memories buried?’

Fry looked up. 'Avoiding those triggers, I suppose.
The ones that set off the memories. The only way is to
avoid them.'

‘Maybe.’

Fry studied him carefully. 'Had you something particular in mind, Ben?'

‘
I'm going to move out of Bridge End Farm, I think.
’

‘
Oh.'

‘I need to get away from the place. There are too many reminders of the past for me to be comfortable there any more.'

‘But your family are there.'

‘
I can visit them. But there comes a time when you
have to be on your own. I think it's come rather late in
my case. Anyway, I don't think Matt and Kate will be sorry to see me move out. They must think I'm in the
way, but they're too polite to say so.'

‘Where will you go?’

For a fleeting moment, Fry had a picture of Ben
Cooper living in one of the little flats in the house on
Grosvenor Avenue, a flat next to her own.

‘Oh, I expect I'll find somewhere.’

Fry nodded. The vision had passed instantly. Cooper
just wouldn't fit in among the peeling wallpaper and the grubby carpets.