Dancing With the Virgins (7 page)

Fry wondered how secure the apartment was. It
occupied part of the second floor of Derwent Court,
a converted spa hotel, a relic of the town's Victorian
past as a health resort. The building had stood derelict
for years before an influx of county council office workers had boosted the demand for housing in
Matlock. Now comfortably-off residents lived at the end
of its marble corridors and stared all day at an expen
sive view over the Derwent Valley, counting the cable
cars as they ferried tourists to the Heights of Abraham.
At least there was a concierge in the lobby downstairs.
She would have to have a word with him before she
left - he would be able to keep an extra careful eye out
for visitors to Derwent Court
.

She stared out of the window into the darkness. The
quarry-blasted hillside stood out white and stark on the
skyline to the south. No attempt had been made to
repair or disguise the damage that had been done to
the landscape by the mineral companies. The scars had
been left as a symbolic reminder, a legacy of the past.
And perhaps as a warning too. A warning of what might easily happen again one day - if no one did anything to prevent it.

‘
Yes, some things take time,' said Maggie. 'Other things take a miracle.
’

*

Ben Cooper had already formed a clear idea in his mind
of what Jenny Weston had been like. There had been
no shortage of details there, for once. The entry in the log at the cycle hire centre had given them the basics. Not only that, but the cycle hire manager knew which car was hers. Once they had got access to it, they had
found her handbag in the glove compartment, with her diary and all the information they could possibly want,
written on the front page in her own hand. It listed not only the name, address and phone number of her next
of kin, but also Jenny's date of birth, her National
Insurance number, the numbers of her bank account and
her mobile phone, the names of her doctor, dentist and
vet, her religion, the address of her insurance company,
her National Trust membership number, her height and
weight, and her shoe size. And her blood group.
And then her father, Eric Weston, had lost no time
arriving from his home at Alfreton as soon as they con
tacted him. Cooper had arrived back at Partridge Cross
from Ringham Edge Farm just in time to sit in on the
interview with DCI Tailby. Mr Weston had been all too
willing to tell them about his daughter. He recited the details eagerly, as if he needed to remind himself, too,
of who Jenny was. Of who she had been
.

Jenny had been married at twenty-one. Her husband,
Martin Stafford, had not been liked by her parents.
Police officers heard that one often, of course. Very few
parents thought the men their daughters chose were
good enough. But in this case, Stafford had lasted about
three and a half years before his violent nature became obvious. Jenny had stayed with him another two years
before they had finally parted
.

The story was a familiar one. A woman abused, yet
reluctant to believe that there wasn't something worth
preserving in her marriage; convinced, somehow, that
her man did what he did because he loved her. It seemed incredible to Cooper that some women con
tinued to expect far too much of marriage. Their beliefs
died hard
.

Mr Weston was deputy head teacher of one of the Eden Valley secondary schools. He had that rather weary and worn look that identified middle-aged
teachers. His hair was mostly on the back of his head,
curly and untidy, and not trimmed on his neck for a long time. He wore a grey suit, but there were shiny
patches on the trousers and an indefinable scent that
reminded Cooper of his own school days. Chalk and musty text books, school dinners and badly washed schoolboys
.

It seemed that Mr Weston was inclined to blame
Martin Stafford for Jenny's death. This was despite the
fact that, as far as he was aware, the two of them hadn't
seen each other for three years.

‘
It would be just like him to have got in touch again,
and for Jenny to agree to meet him, without telling us,'
he said.

‘
Do you know where Mr Stafford lives now?' asked Tailby.

‘
No, I don't. I think Jenny knew. But she never told
us that, either.'

‘
Why?'

‘
She thought we would interfere. We were so worried
about her. She never seemed to see sense where that
man was concerned.'

‘
There are no children from the marriage?'

‘
No.'

‘
That's fortunate, I suppose?'

‘
I'm not sure about that,' said Mr Weston
.

Jenny had met Stafford while she was a student at
the University of Derby. He had been a journalist then,
working at the city's
Evening Telegraph —
a senior
reporter with a flair for off-beat features, or so he had said. According to Mr Weston, Stafford had cultivated
a knowing, cynical image, had drunk too much and had
cared about little except himself and his career.

‘
Jenny was studying to be a radiologist,' he said. 'She
was already in the third year of her course, and doing
really well. She could have had a good career ahead of
her, if it hadn't been for Stafford. She met him in a pub
in Derby, and he made a beeline for her. She was an attractive girl. And far too trusting.'

‘
What happened?'

‘
She became completely besotted with him. She
wouldn't listen to us when we told her to put her studies
first, that her own career was more important. In the
end, she gave up her studies to marry Stafford when
he asked her to. She said she wanted to start a family
with him.
We
had to accept it.'

‘
But you said there were no children?'

‘
No children. Only divorce.
’

Even the divorce had come only after a series of short-
lived reconciliations which were, according to Jenny's father, simply Martin Stafford's demonstrations of his
ability to manipulate their daughter. He had some inex
plicable power over her, and he was reluctant to give
it up. The situation dragged on for a long time, painfully
and unsatisfactorily.

‘
When it was all over, Jenny managed to get a job
with Global Assurance in Derby,' said Mr Weston. 'But
then she had to move to their new call centre when it
was built in Sheffield. We didn't like it. It meant she
was away from us, away from her family. She went to live alone in that little terraced house off the Ecclesall
Road. It was too far away. All she had with her was
her blessed cat, not even a dog. Her mother was very
upset. She worried about what might happen to her. We both did.'

‘
You were worried that Mr Stafford might try to get
back in touch with her?'

‘
Yes, of course. And that we wouldn't know about it.
Anything could have happened.'

‘
But it didn't.'

‘
Well ... not so far as we know.
’

Mr Weston tried to recall a quick succession of boy
friends after Jenny had moved to Sheffield. All of them,
he was sure, were men who were completely wrong for
her. To Ben Cooper, Jenny sounded as though she had
gone through those men like a woman looking for some
thing she would never find, a woman whose better judgement had been cast aside. For what? A kind of penance? At one point, there had been an abortion.
Jenny had not told her father at the time. His wife had
told him about it, much later.

‘
That was something I could never understand,' he
said. He shook his head, and Cooper saw the glitter of tears in the teacher's eyes. 'I never will understand it.
Jenny always wanted children.
’

And Jenny had hated her job, too. She had been good
at it, had been promoted to supervisor, with twenty-
five girls working for her. She had responsibilities
and a better salary; she was well regarded by her employers and liked by her colleagues. But she had hated it.

‘
She said it was a sweatshop. She really disliked
that. She kept talking about the pressure, unattainable
targets, the constant surveillance by managers to make
sure you were always working, the tedium, the repeti
tiveness, the strain of being polite all the time to
customers who didn't want to speak to you. Oh, and
the posters round the walls. They all said: "Smile".'
Jenny had also been depressed by the rate of burn-out
among her staff – even the best of them lasting little more than twelve months in the job. Many sacrificed
themselves, as Jenny saw it, to marriage and to raising
a family, purely as a means of escape.

‘
She didn't even manage to make any proper friends.
She said animals were preferable to people. It might
have helped a lot if she could have made friends. But
Jenny said she barely had a chance to get to know any
of her colleagues before they were gone. All the new recruits to these call centres now are youngsters,
straight from school into their induction training, pull
ing on their telephone headsets and believing that's
what work is all about. In my position, I see them leav
ing school, full of hope, and I know what will happen
to them. We do our best with them, you know, but that's how a lot of them end up. Very sad.'

‘
Did Jenny talk of escaping from the job?' asked Tailby.

‘
Oh yes. All the time.
’

Of course she had talked of escaping; everyone did. She talked of working with animals, of being a veterin
ary nurse or running a wildlife sanctuary. But there was
nothing she was qualified to do, and nowhere else she
could go. Now and then she thought about her lost
career as a radiologist. And those were the worst times,
said Eric Weston. It was knowing it was too late that depressed her the most.

‘
The one thing that Jenny really loved was the Peak
District,' said Mr Weston. 'We used to bring her here
as a child at weekends and in the summer holidays.
Days out in Dovedale and at Castleton. When she went
to university she joined a student walking club and they
hiked over all the hills in the area. They did the whole
of the Pennine Way one summer, staying at youth hostels. It was where she always came back to.
’

Later, after her divorce, Jenny had again spent as
much time as she could in the Peak District, walking, but often alone, since friends didn't seem to last long.
She had tried pony trekking a few times, said Mr
Weston. But recently she had taken to mountain biking.
She had her own bike at home, but had preferred to hire a bike from Peak Cycle Hire or from one of the
Derbyshire County Council hire centres. Often she rode
the trails created from the old railway lines. But at times,
when she felt the need, she would leave the trails and
set off on to the moors.

‘
Yes, Ringham Moor was one of her favourite places,' said Mr Weston. 'We went there once as a family, many years ago. Jenny and John — that's her brother — and
Susan and me, a happy family together.
’

And Mr Weston added that he thought, perhaps,
Jenny might have been trying to recapture happy memories, a happiness that had escaped her in other ways.
He didn't know what had prompted her to take to the
moors on that particular day. He didn't know why she
had headed for Ringham. He had no more answers to
give
.

Ben Cooper had walked away from the interview
dissatisfied. Jenny Weston had not been anyone out of
the ordinary. She had achieved nothing exceptional, and
nothing extraordinary had happened to her during her
lifetime. Could she really just have been another woman
who had made all the wrong choices? If so, Jenny had
been making the wrong choices right up until the
moment she died. And one of those choices had been
fatal
.