Dancing With the Virgins (31 page)

*

On the way out of her house in Grosvenor Avenue that
night, Fry caught a glimpse of a figure lurking in the
shadows under the overgrown hedges near the street
light across the road. It wasn't unusual. The female
students and nurses staying in her own house and the
ones on either side attracted a motley selection of boy
friends, some of whom wouldn't look out of place in a
cell in Derby Prison
.

Fry studied the figure carefully. If she hadn't been alert on a professional level, she wouldn't have seen
him. He was wearing dark clothes, and standing quite still, so that his movement didn't give him away. Nine
out of ten people would have passed by without
noticing him at all. Fry shrugged. It was nothing to do
with her. When she was off duty, she didn't feel any obligation to concern herself about the dangerous
private lives of her fellow flat-dwellers. She had plenty
of concerns of her own to think about
.

She fetched her car from behind the house and drove
out of Edendale and through Grindleford to get on the
A625 into Sheffield. She tried to keep her eyes closed
to the scenery until she was into the built-up area near
Ecclesall. She might live on the back of the moon, but
she didn't have to admire it. She was a city girl, and always would be
.

Fry began to curse Ben Cooper. She cursed him for
being the one who had revived memories she had been
trying to put behind her. There was only the one reason
she had chosen Derbyshire to transfer to, when she ought to have gone south, to London. They always needed officers in the Met; it would have suited her much better in a big anonymous city, where nobody
cared who you were or what you did with your life.
By now, she would have been well established, instead
of dickering about in this tinpot rural force. She had
made the decision for her own reasons, and for months
now she had been pretending that those reasons didn't
exist. She had tried to let the job take over, and had hoped it would become her number one priority. No -her
only
priority. But it hadn't worked. The time for pretending was over
.

*

A couple of hours later, she returned from Sheffield
tired and frustrated. Pain was shooting up her leg, and
she could feel her ankle had swollen to twice its size
where she had twisted it at the cattle market. She had
walked the streets of the city centre, hunting out the dark corners and following the sounds of the uneasy silences that lay beyond the bright lights around the
pubs and night clubs. She had explored all the subways,
lit and unlit, walking in areas most women would have avoided after six o'clock in the evening. She had visited
a shelter for the homeless she had located north of the
university
.

But Sheffield was a big place. She might even have
to widen her search to Rotherham and Doncaster. Fry
knew it could go on for months or years, without success. But once she'd started, she would never be able
to give it up
.

When she reached Grosvenor Avenue, she noticed
that the same figure was opposite the house again. He
seemed to be watching a lighted window on the first
floor. A peeping tom, no doubt about it. It was time to
give him a nasty surprise
.

Fry unlocked the front door and went into the hallway. She waited a minute, then switched off the hall
light and took the bulb out of the fitting, in case one of
the students came downstairs. Then she walked straight
through the house and stepped out of the back door.
She clambered over the garden fence and moved silently down the alley between the houses until she could emerge on to the road again
.

She could see the man's back now. His shoulders
were hunched in a black or dark blue jacket, his hands in
his pockets. He was totally unsuspecting. A pushover
.

When she touched him, he jumped like a startled rabbit and tried to turn round.

‘
What the -!
’

But she already had him in a wrist hold, with her
other hand above his elbow and his arm held straight
out. From this position, she could force him easily to
his knees, cuff him, do what she liked with him. The thought gave her a surge of satisfaction.

‘
What's your business?' she said
.

He kept very still. Now she was close to him, Fry could see he wasn't a big man, though he was well
wrapped up and wore a peaked cap. He said nothing,
but kept his mouth tight shut and rolled his eyes towards her. She applied a bit more pressure to her grip.

‘
Whatever it is, I suggest you go and do it somewhere
else, mate.
’

He was so still that she knew he was going to try to
take her by surprise and break free. If she had too firm
a grip on him when he tried it, one of them would get
hurt - and she knew which of them it would be. Fry didn't want to find herself responsible for a suspect
with a broken arm at this time of night; maybe ending up on the wrong end of an ABH charge in the morning
when the suspect got to talk to a lawyer
.

She increased the distance between them slightly and
relaxed her grip just enough so that he would notice.
Suddenly, he jerked his arm free, put his head down
and legged it as hard as he could for the corner of the road. Probably he had a car parked somewhere out of
sight
.

Fry let him go. There was no point in chasing him,
even if her leg hadn't been hurting. She had definitely
given him a scare, though. That was one weirdo who
would think twice about following women in the
future
.

*

Ben Cooper managed to get Weenink moving again and
they turned left at the top of the path and emerged on to Bargate. There was still some traffic passing across
the lights a few yards away, where the pedestrianized
area began.

‘
Uh-oh, got to have a piss,' said Weenink.

‘
You'll have to hold on.'

‘
Can't.
’

Weenink began to unzip and stumbled into the door
way of Boots the Chemists.

‘
Oh, Jesus.' Cooper stood with his back to the door
way, watching the cars cross the end of Bargate, praying
that none of them would turn down the street. The
sound of a trickle turned into a steady stream, and a
pool of urine began to run past his feet on to the pavement.

‘
Hurry up.
’

Weenink just grunted. Cooper swore under his breath
as a patrol car appeared at the lights and stopped on
the red signal. The car had the distinctive green and
yellow checkerboard pattern on the side that indicated
it belonged to Traffic division. Cooper wasn't even
likely to know the crew. Not that knowing them would
help in the least
.

He recalled travelling on the Ml one day with his
father, back at the time of the year-long miners' strike
— 1984, it must have been. Ben had been fourteen years
old, and he had gone with his father and Matt to a
football match. Derby County had been playing Aston
Villa at Birmingham in the FA Cup. He remembered
the match well. But he remembered the incident on the
motorway, too
.

On the way back, they had come up at the rear of a
long convoy of coaches, one behind the other, travelling
in the inside lane of the motorway. They all carried the
name of a coach operator in London and they were
packed with men, like some factory outing. When the
Coopers' car was close behind the last vehicle, every
man on the coach stood up on the seats and dropped
his trousers. There was a sudden blooming of white
buttocks like exotic lilies in a pond as the men mooned
through the windows at passing motorists
.

Ben and Matt had laughed, until their father became
angry, then pulled out and began to overtake the coach.
Maybe he had intended to pull the driver over, Ben wasn't sure. But Sergeant Cooper was off duty, and
they weren't even in Derbyshire. This had been Notting
hamshire, somewhere south of Junction 27
.

At some point, Ben had sensed his father change his
mind. His foot had slipped off the accelerator. He had
fallen back momentarily, then accelerated again and
passed the convoy as quickly as possible. The boys said
nothing. As they passed, they could see the uniforms.
They could see the stickers in the front window of every coach. Ten coaches there were — they counted them as
they passed. 'Metropolitan Police', the stickers said
.

They realized that the men were reinforcements arriv
ing to help control the mass pickets of Yorkshire miners
then threatening Nottinghamshire pits. Law and order
was on the road
.

The lights changed and the patrol car had moved on
by the time Weenink reappeared.

‘
Have you got any beer back at your place?' he asked.
'What is it you've done, Todd?
’

Weenink's mood was changing again, the cold air
sharpening his tone. 'It happens all the time, Ben. You're
not so innocent as you make out. You must know. I bet
you've done it yourself.'

‘
I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘
I'm talking about a little bit of evidence being
improved here and there. It happens. Everybody knows
that it happens. Where's the harm? As long as you don't
get caught.'

‘
But-' Ben Cooper struggled to capture all the
reasons that ran through his mind why this was inconceivable. He thought of words like justice and
integrity, like responsibility and honour. He thought of
concepts like loyalty to your service, like honesty and
truth. And self-respect. And he looked at Todd Weenink
and knew that it wasn't worth mentioning even one of
them.

‘
I can't believe that you're telling me this.'

‘
I'm telling you because you asked me. And because
I know you won't shop me.'

‘
How do you know I won't?
’

Weenink winked at him. 'Because you're so loyal and
principled. You won't betray me, will you, Ben? No, I
know you won't. It's against your morality. It's not what
they tell you in the Bible of Bullshit, is it?'

‘
I'm surprised you've even read it.
’

Cooper hadn't read the Police Training Manual much
recently, either. Who did, when you had been on the
job a while and had learned the realities of the situation?
Todd Weenink had certainly been doing the job far too
long for that. The Bible of Bullshit was read only by wet trainees and senior managers.

‘
You know what'll happen, Todd. In the public's eyes,
you'll get lumped in with the worst there are. A copper
gone wrong is never forgiven.'

‘
But all I did -'

‘
I don't want to know.'

‘
You just asked.'

‘
I've changed my mind.'

‘
Fuck you, then.
’

Cooper watched Weenink weave away for a few
yards along Bargate, then stumble and put out a hand
to support himself on a lamp post. He was beyond
hope, of course. Breaking the rules was one thing, but
breaking the law was another. There was no way that
Cooper or anyone else could help Weenink. It didn't
matter how much you owed a colleague out of loyalty,
or how close you knew other people were to being in
the same situation - or even how close you had come
to it yourself, at times. Weenink had made his mistake,
and he would have to be abandoned to his fate. The wolves would be circling soon enough
.

With a sigh, Cooper propped Weenink up and let him drape his arm round his shoulder. Despite the
weight, he managed to make it to the lights at the corner
of Bargate. Then he began to look for a taxi to get them
out of there. The night threatened to stretch out end
lessly ahead of him
.