Dancing With the Virgins (19 page)

It only took a few seconds before she was fully under
control. She knew there was little outward sign. Most
people noticed nothing, certainly her male colleagues.
But Maggie was watching her fixedly, in absolute
silence. When Fry met her stare again, something had
changed. There was an indefinable difference in the
atmosphere, as if somebody had just turned on the cen
tral heating, and a hint of warmth was beginning to creep into the cold walls.
'Would you like some coffee?' said Maggie
.

Fry caught a glimpse into a kitchen as Maggie opened
the door at the far end of the room. While she waited, Fry looked through her notes, checking the items she
had marked for raising in conversation. One thing she hadn't mentioned yet was Maggie's family. The closest
surviving relative was a sister, who lived somewhere in the west of Ireland
.

She watched Maggie pour the coffee from a cafetiere.
She wore no jewellery of any kind on her hands — no
rings, no bracelet. There was no make-up on her face,
either, though it might have helped to hide the scars.
She wore no lipstick. Her only adornment consisted of two tiny gold studs in her ears, like miniature crosses.

‘
Last time you were interviewed,' said Fry, 'you
weren't in a steady relationship, according to the notes.
Is that still the case?'

‘
Yes.' Maggie smiled, without humour. 'They do put
everything
in my file, don't they? Yes, it makes life diffi
cult when it comes to forming relationships. Nobody
wants to have to look at a face that would frighten the
horses.'

‘
Of course, a long-term relationship isn't to be taken
for granted these days. Not everybody wants commit
ment. I suppose it depends whether you want children
or not, and how you want them to grow up.'

‘
I've never wanted children anyway,' said Maggie. 'Some people think that's very strange for a woman.'
She laughed, but it was a nervous laugh, at the thought
of a disconcerting prospect. 'Well, perhaps I'll change.
Perhaps I'll wake up one day and discover I have a
maternal instinct after all. What do you think? We're
all victims of our hormones, aren't we?
’

Maggie put down the cafetiere. She picked up the
pen that had lain by her hand all through the interview.
She scrawled some notes on her pad, filling the empty
lines for the first time. Fry leaned forward slightly to
try to see what she was writing. But she could see that
it was some kind of shorthand. Maggie wrote for a
couple of minutes, concentrating as if Fry had suddenly
ceased to be present. Then she threw down her pen.

‘
When will you come to see me again?' she asked.

‘
Wednesday,' said Fry promptly.

‘
Make it in the morning. Nine o'clock. My mind is fresher then.'

‘
OK.
’

Fry looked at the big sash window and the remnants
of the autumn sun forming red streaks and dark
shadows on the roofs of Matlock. The sun was setting
somewhere behind her. The light must be falling on the
front of the building, because it certainly wasn't reaching the room where they sat. In the morning, it would
be different. In the morning, Maggie's mind might be
fresher. But the light would also be in the south-east,
shining on this window. Lighting up Maggie's face
.

*

Will and Dougie Leach were sitting quietly in the kitchen at Ringham Edge Farm. Their father had
brought the portable television set into the kitchen, and
they were watching the news, eyes fixed on the face of
the newsreader as he spoke about interest rates, trade
wars, and disasters in distant parts of the world
.

It was well past the boys' normal bedtime. Their
mother would never have let them stay up so late. She
would have hurried them off to bed with warnings about being up early for school in the morning. But
their father didn't seem to care. He forgot about them
as long as they were quiet and didn't get in his way. And Will and Dougie had learned how to be quiet
.

Warren Leach was crouched over the old oak desk
in the front room of the farmhouse — the room he called
an office. He had a desk lamp with a dim forty-watt
bulb held over a scatter of papers. The boys had no real
idea what the papers were, except that they were bad
news. Every night he got the papers out and looked at
them again. But no matter how many times he looked,
they only ever seemed to make him more unhappy
.

The news finished and some incomprehensible com
edy programme started, with a lot of swearing. The boys shifted uncomfortably, knowing their mother
would have been angry to see them watching the programme. But without her to tell them what to do, the
boys sat on, their eyes growing tired, reluctant to move
or make a noise in case they were noticed
.

Finally, when little Dougie was already asleep with
his head on the arm of the chair, Will heard the front
door bang. Their father had gone out
.

Will got up to switch off the television. He shook his
brother awake, and together they crept up the stairs to
their bedrooms. Their beds were unmade, the sheets
tangled and uncomfortable. But both of them were so
tired that they didn't notice
.

But Will didn't go to sleep straight away. For a while,
he lay staring at the ceiling and wondering where it
was that his father went. He prayed that he hadn't gone
near the shippon, that his father would leave Doll alone.
Although people didn't come at night any more, Will knew there was nothing good about what his father was doing
.

Will had lived all his life on the farm. He knew its
patterns and routines, he understood the rhythms of its
activities. And there was one thing that he knew per
fectly well. There was nothing that could possibly need
doing around the farm at this time of night.

14

‘
All right, what's the latest weirdo count?
’

To Ben Cooper, Chief Superintendent Jepson looked
as though he didn't really want to know the answer.
It
was a question that risked spoiling the Tuesday morn
ing meeting almost before it had started. Cooper tried
hard to fade into the background of the incident room.
He and Todd Weenink would be following up the line
of enquiry about a white van reported in the Ringham
Edge area, which one witness claimed to have seen before, and which might therefore be local. That was all the excitement he needed for this morning
.

Cooper saw DCI Tailby hesitate at the Chief Super's
question and look sideways
at
DI Hitchens. But Hitch
ens looked very cheerful for such an early hour, and he
had the answers ready.

‘
Well, the uniforms on duty up there say they had trouble turning away a bunch of characters in black
coats,' he said. 'Apparently they were carrying so much
metalwork on their bodies they wouldn't have got
through airport security without the help of a surgeon.
’

‘
What did they want?'

‘
They said blood had been spilled on the Virgins, and
that meant the power would manifest some time in the
next twenty-four hours, so they had to be there to receive it.'

‘
Bollocks,' said Jepson.

‘
They were pretty insistent. In the end, they only
retreated as far as the pub in Ringham. The inspector is worried that when they come back they'll be tanked
up and more aggressive. Fortunately, I think we've
managed to keep them out of the way of the other lot
so far.'

‘
What other lot?'

‘
The other lot who say they have to perform a cleans
ing ritual dedicated to the Great Goddess, so as to dispel
the influence of evil from the stone circle, which is a
sacred place. Some of the bobbies were all for letting
them go ahead with that one.'

‘
You what?'

‘
Well, they're all women, and it seems they have to
perform this ritual naked.
’

Jepson put his head in his hands and groaned.
'It's called "sky-clad",' said Hitchens.

‘
What is?'

‘
Having no clothes on. You're clad in nothing but the
sky, so that you're much closer to nature and the Great
Goddess.'

‘
Hitchens, are you enjoying this?'

‘
No, sir. I'm just reporting the information that the
uniformed section gathered. They spent quite a while
talking to this lot, I think. We might have some converts
in E Division. They'll be wanting to form an Edendale
chapter of the Order of the Golden Moon.'

‘
Haven't we had any plain old psychics and
mediums, then?'

‘
You're kidding. Twelve at the last count. We've also
had a dowser offering to locate the knife using nothing
but a bent twig; an animal linguist who wants to interro
gate the squirrels, because she thinks they could have
been eyewitnesses, and a UFO expert who has proof
that the victim was abducted by aliens for unspecified
experiments which went wrong. Oh, and some preser
vation experts from that government department, Eng
lish Heritage.'

‘
English Heritage? What the hell do they want?
’

‘
They demand the right to inspect the stone circle for
damage. They say it's a priceless piece of our cultural
history.
’

Jepson frowned. 'I've heard that phrase before. Is it
from a book or something?'

‘
Could be,' said Hitchens. 'It seems to be us that English
Heritage suspect of damaging the stones, by the way.
’

‘
They're nuts. Get rid of them.'

‘
They're not half as bad as the press. That lot are all
over us like a nasty disease.'

‘
Was that their chopper over the moor yesterday?
’

‘
Sure. And it was also one of their blokes we pulled
down from the top of a tree with his long lens. He'd
already been up there a day or so, in camouflage gear.
He slept tied to a branch. He said he learned how to do it at an eco-warriors' protest camp in Berkshire.'

‘
That's a neat trick,' said Jepson, half-admiringly.

‘
I don't know about neat. Twenty-four hours is a long time. You should have seen the state of the grass at the
bottom of the tree. That's how we located him. Even
our bobbies know human shit when they see it.' Jepson pulled a face. Then he looked suspiciously at
Tailby, who had been listening silently.

‘
What have you got to say, Stewart?'

‘
It's a pretty depressing story, I'm afraid.' Tailby
sounded resigned. 'The sixteen fires we found remnants of, they were all set during the last three months. Some
of the people who made them built them properly. Others ... well, others were lucky not to have set fire
to the whole moor. There are the animal bones we found
buried nearby, too. First indications suggest a medium-
sized dog.
’

Cooper remembered seeing the slides of the animal
bones. It hadn't been immediately obvious what they
were. They were just slivers of something pale caught in
the dark fibrous peat, like those burnt stems of heather, crumbling and white. Then the slide had suddenly come
into focus, and the shapes of the white splinters came
together in a vaguely familiar shape. He had thought
of the farmyard at home, of rats caught by the sheep
dogs, and the discarded evidence of foxes hunting in
the fields. But this wasn't quite the same. This was
something much bigger, something with a heavier and
wider skull than a rat.

‘
Do those two gypsies go in for animal sacrifices?' asked Jepson.

‘
The youths in the van? They're not exactly gypsies,'
said Hitchens.

‘
Whatever they are.'

‘
They're just travellers, sir,' said Cooper.

‘
Travellers, my arse. They're not going anywhere. What makes them travellers?'

‘
They're classed as having no settled home, sir. A Volkswagen van doesn't count as a home under the law, even if it's broken down.'

‘
So what do they live on down there, Cooper? Nuts and berries, or what?'

‘
Our information is that Calvin Lawrence catches the
bus into Bakewell once a week to collect his benefit money.'

‘
Ah. So he's a Social Security scrounger. What about
the other one?'

‘
Simon Bevington isn't even registered for benefits,'
said Cooper. 'He seems to stay in the vicinity of the quarry or on the moor. He doesn't claim anything. I suppose they must share what little they've got.'

‘
Oh, love and peace, hallelujah,' said Jepson.

‘
It must be enough for both of them — they hardly
have an extravagant lifestyle. But they're not gypsies.
’

‘
They could be circus trapeze artists, for all I care,
Cooper. Have we asked them about animal sacrifices?'

'No, sir.'

‘
Then ask them. And find this Martin Stafford and the girl, Ros Daniels. We ought to be able to find at
least one of them, shouldn't we? Is there anything else?
And don't make it anything too exciting. I've had enough for today.'

‘
Well,' said Hitchens, as if suddenly noticing an important item that everyone had forgotten, 'there
is
the phallus farm.'

‘
What
kind of farm?' said Jepson.

‘
Well, I don't mean Warren Leach's kind of farm.
There are no EU subsidies for this particular crop. ...
’