The Devil's Edge (17 page)

Monica Gamble was waiting to grab Cooper as he arrived at Chapel Close. She was agitated about the appearance of police at her door again.

‘You can’t think Barry has anything to do with what’s been happening to people in Riddings,’ she said. ‘He’s an old fool, I know. But he’s harmless.’

‘What concerns me is whether we’re being told the complete truth,’ said Cooper.

‘There’s nothing to hide.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘It’s just because Barry raised the alarm. It’s always the person who finds the body who gets suspected by the police, isn’t it? I’ve seen it time after time on the TV.’

Cooper wanted to point out that what she saw on TV was just fiction. But sometimes it did come a bit too close to reality for comfort. People who reported the finding of a body often turned out to be involved in the death. Either they thought it would signal their innocence, or they did it out of a desire to be involved in the investigation in some way. You couldn’t rule it out. Not even with an old fool like Barry Gamble.

‘There must be more witnesses,’ said Monica appealingly. ‘Someone else must have seen something on Tuesday night.’

‘Well …’

She grasped his sleeve desperately, clutching at any possibility.

‘They did, didn’t they?’ she said. ‘Someone?’

‘There was a party of walkers coming down The Hill from the edge. They recall seeing someone in the phone box, but that’s all.’

‘The phone box in the village?’ she said.

‘Yes. Why?’

She stared at him for a long moment, as if she was working something out in her mind.

‘Oh, nothing. It’s nothing,’ she said finally.

Cooper turned as Gamble was brought from the back of the house, where he had no doubt been lurking in his shed.

‘All right. Would you come with us, Mr Gamble?’

‘Are you arresting me?’

‘No. We’re going to take you to Valley View. I want you to show us exactly where you were on Tuesday night, and explain what you saw.’

‘I’ve told you all that.’

‘Well, make it easier for us to understand, would you?’

Gamble settled his cowboy hat on his head, pulling it down over his ears as if that made him ready for anything.

‘Have it your way,’ he said.

‘And remember that Valley View is a crime scene, Mr Gamble. While you’re there, please don’t touch anything.’

‘Fair enough. Lead on, Macduff.’

There was a hold-up at the end of the road, where the access into Chapel Close was blocked by a van and trailer being turned round in the narrow space. This must happen all the time in Riddings. One man was trying to do a twelve-point turn while another stood behind and shouted a warning when he came too near a wall.

Finally they managed to complete the manoeuvre and drew into the side to let Cooper’s car pass.

When Cooper saw who the van belonged to, he wound down the window of the Toyota.

‘Mr Summers.’

‘Oh, hello.’

‘I see you have a different assistant today.’

‘Eh? Oh, yeah. This is Alek. I only employ the lads on a casual basis, you see. As and when needed, you know.’ He glanced at Cooper. ‘It’s all legit. All the paperwork is in order. I don’t employ illegals or anything like that.’

‘No, I’m sure you don’t.’

‘And I pay all my taxes. None of that cash-in-the-back-pocket stuff. Me and Customs and Revenue are like best mates.’

‘Fine.’

Cooper didn’t really believe it. Summers had been too eager to bring the subject up. Small-scale tradesmen like him took cash in hand all the time, gave the householders a lower rate for the job to keep it off the books. It was nice to see that Summers had a bit of a guilty conscience about it. But it wasn’t something Cooper was interested in right at the moment.

Valley View was quieter now. The crime-scene tape was still in place, and a uniformed officer had been assigned to deter curious passers-by. But much of the attention had moved to Fourways next door, where the forensics activity was taking place.

The officer on duty looked bored, but his face lit up when he saw the detectives arriving. He made quite a performance of signing them in, as if this one task might justify his pay this week.

‘Have you had much interest from the public?’ asked Cooper.

‘What public? No one pays any attention to me. The media go past here sometimes, but they’re all heading further along the road.’

‘I’ve seen them. They’re outside Moorside House.’

‘Bloke there is a pop star, they say.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, help yourself, Sergeant. Spend as long here as like.’

Cooper started to feel sorry for the officer. He’d done plenty of duties like this himself when he was in uniform. They could be mind-numbing.

‘Let us know if we can get you anything,’ he said.

‘A cold beer would be nice.’

‘DC Murfin might give you a wine gum.’

‘Oh, cheers.’

For the next few minutes, Cooper watched Barry Gamble going through something that resembled a pantomime rehearsal. He was such a bad actor that it was impossible to believe anything he said or did. But he hammed up it for his audience as if he was playing the Dame in
Jack and the Beanstalk
.

‘And I went “Ooh, what was that noise? I do hope there’s nothing wrong. I’d better go and have a look.” So I decided to walk this way a bit to see what the trouble was. And I saw – a light.’

Cooper glared at Villiers and Hurst as they tried to stifle laughter. The sound of a giggle only made Gamble act up more. His version of ‘walk this way’ became a cross between Danny La Rue and Captain Mainwaring from
Dad’s Army
. If you could look pompous and camp at the same time, Barry Gamble managed it. He marched purposefully towards the house, his arms waving in dramatic semaphores.

‘It was coming from this window here.’

Before they could stop him, Gamble had stepped towards the wall of the house and put his hand on the window pane. A flat hand, palm against the glass, all four fingers and thumb pressed on to the surface. That would leave a perfect set of prints.

‘Mr Gamble, please – I asked you not to touch anything.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

He took his hand away from the glass and looked at it, as if it might be possible to withdraw the touch of his fingers.

Cooper cursed quietly to himself. That was his own fault. He shouldn’t have allowed Gamble to get so close to anything.

‘I’m not sure that told us anything,’ said Villiers, after Gamble had been taken home. ‘But you’ve got your own methods, obviously.’

‘Details,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s the details.’

And that was true, very often. But as he drove out of Riddings and passed under the Devil’s Edge, he had the feeling that it wasn’t the case in this village. He was beginning to suspect that there was something right under his nose, but written in letters too big for him to see.

16

Everyone had been called back to West Street for a briefing. The air of expectation was tangible as the meeting room filled up. Was there some progress in inquiries in South Yorkshire, where a joint operation was targeting the Savages? Did they have a person of interest?

Apparently not. DI Hitchens made no reference to South Yorkshire, but wanted to go over the two incidents in Riddings.

‘Thanks to the parents and the oldest daughter, we’ve finally established what’s missing from the Barron house,’ he said. ‘It seems extraordinary they would go to those extremes for such a small haul, but still … we haven’t been able to add anything to the list, no matter how hard we try. And as you’ll see, it’s a very short list. An iPhone in a pink case, belonging to Zoe Barron. A women’s Gucci wallet with an interlocking “G” charm. I’m told it’s made of rose peony guccissima leather, whatever that is. It was a gift to Zoe from Jake Barron. Two small, high-value items, easy to grab hold of. The wallet alone is worth three or four hundred pounds. We don’t know how much cash was in it.’

‘The phone …?’

‘It hasn’t been used since it was stolen. It was switched on, but it went off the network some time on Tuesday night, after the theft. Probably the battery just ran out.’

Information sheets were passed round, showing specifications and photographs of similar items to those stolen in the attack on the Barrons’ house. For a few minutes there was a general murmuring among the assembled officers.

‘That wallet has twelve card slots,’ said Murfin to Cooper. ‘Made for someone who might actually possess twelve credit cards, then.’

‘Hardly surprising, Gavin. The wallet is worth three or four hundred pounds, remember.’

‘They’ll have taken the cash and ditched the wallet. Even if they knew how much it was worth, it’s too distinctive for them to try to sell it.’

‘If they knew what they were doing,’ said Cooper.

‘The Savages are pros. That’s why we’ve never got near them.’

‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘
They
are.’

Murfin looked at him, then at Villiers. He grunted. ‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re about to make it all too complicated? All I want is a nice quiet life, you know. I want to do exactly what I’m told, no more and no less. Another few months of keeping my head down and my nose clean, and I’m free and clear.’

‘Ah, but Gavin – is retirement what you really want? Remember, it’s impossible to do nothing all day. You’d go mad.’

Someone raised a hand, and Hitchens hushed the room.

‘Isn’t it right that the Barrons had alarm systems in place at their property?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Hitchens. ‘Why?’

‘Well, don’t burglars normally choose properties without alarms?’

‘It wasn’t an option once they decided to target a village like Riddings. All of these homes have security systems. Some of them are more sophisticated than others, but you’d have to be an expert to know that from the outside, just from looking at the alarm box. A number of them have automatic response from the monitoring centres. But apparently the only householder in the Curbar Lane area who has thought it necessary to install a panic button is Mr Tyler Kaye at Moorside House.’

‘There could have been some inside information.’

‘We’ve got lists of names and run checks on them. Nothing is presenting itself at the moment.’

‘The gardeners would be favourite, I reckon. Or a cleaner.’

‘Sometimes you can get the information you want online anyway. No need to hand out any cash.’

Cooper shifted restlessly in his chair as he listened to officers going over the arguments. Everyone knew the methods to use. At one time, burglars could buy information from the milkman or the postman about who was away on holiday, and which properties would be standing empty. It enabled them to get into a property at the start of a vacation, so that any loss might not be noticed for two weeks or more. That left plenty of time to fence the stuff and stash the proceeds before the police came knocking.

These days, some professionals used the internet. People gave away all sorts of information on Facebook, boasting about where they were going for their hols, tweeting from their villa on the Costa, posting messages to their friends to let them know when they’d be back. Dead handy, that was. There were other high-tech methods. Last year, thieves had broken into a couple’s car while they were on holiday in the Peak District, and stolen their sat nav. Then they’d plugged the device into their own car and set it to ‘home’. The sat nav had led them straight to the family’s empty house in Liverpool. Simple.

‘No, the gardeners. I’d take a bet on it.’

Yes, the old-fashioned ways still worked, too. The milkmen had disappeared, and the postmen were more cautious. But in neighbourhoods like Riddings, there were always the gardeners and cleaners, the folk who came and went un noticed and unappreciated. Better still, they were often paid peanuts. Minimum wage or less, cash in hand and not a word to the tax man, or the Immigration Service either. They sometimes found they could earn a decent bonus for a bit of information. And why not? It was all part of the free-market economy, wasn’t it?

Finally Cooper could bear it no longer.

‘We should check the Barrons’ background,’ he said.

Silence fell. To his surprise, Hitchens looked at him as if he’d just broken wind.

‘Why, DS Cooper?’

Cooper hesitated now, feeling the force of his DI’s disapproving stare.

‘Surely it’s standard procedure in a murder inquiry? To establish the victim’s connections and relationships. To find out what was going on in their life.’

‘If we were looking for a more personal motive for murder, yes.’

‘But aren’t we?’

Hitchens took a couple of steps towards him.

‘So you don’t believe in the Savages, DS Cooper? You don’t think all those other incidents took place in Hathersage, and Baslow, and Padley? You doubt the existence of householders injured by violent assailants in a series of aggravated burglaries? These offenders are looking for financial gain and the thrill of violence. At Valley View they just went a little bit further down that road. They could see that the Barrons had money and lived in an expensive property, and were likely to be vulnerable. I don’t think they needed any more motive than that.’

There was a moment of silence in the room after the DI’s speech. No one seemed quite sure what had happened to provoke the outburst. Cooper kept quite still, in case a movement from him caused any further provocation. But inside he was feeling wounded by the unfair treatment. He was sure he was right. But it was difficult to explain why, especially in this atmosphere, and in a room full of his colleagues.

‘Actually, DS Cooper has a point.’

The voice was Superintendent Branagh’s. She hadn’t moved from her position at the front of the room, but she took control of the situation without any effort. Hitchens stepped back, and the officers nearest to Cooper visibly relaxed.

‘There are a number of features about the attack on the Barron family that trouble me particularly,’ said Branagh. ‘For a start, their home life doesn’t seem to have been entirely idyllic.’

‘How so?’ asked Cooper.

Branagh looked at the DI. ‘Paul?

‘Yes.’ Hitchens turned over a few pages of his file. ‘Well, the oldest Barron girl, Melissa, has been able to talk to us a bit about Tuesday night. She’s told us that she heard her mother shouting, and then glass smashing downstairs.’

‘But she didn’t go down to see what had happened?’

‘No. She says she thought her parents were fighting. So she turned her music up a bit louder.’

‘What sort of childhood is that?’ said Cooper, shocked. ‘Isolated from your parents, spending all your time alone in your own room. And then – she was so used to hearing them arguing and throwing things at each other that it just seemed like a normal evening. Something to shut out with more noise.’

Hitchens threw out his hands in a helpless gesture, suggesting that he was unable to explain it.

The briefing moved on.

‘There were white handprints found by scenes-of-crime on the rear wall. DS Cooper has suggested that these could be from rock climbers, who use chalk to improve their grip. There are many climbers who visit Riddings Edge. It could be a long job, but we’re going to try to establish which of them might have been in the area on Tuesday evening.’

Cooper could sense a few black looks coming his way at that. Whoever got the frustrating job of tracking down the climbers would not be thanking him for the suggestion

‘Others we haven’t identified include a person seen by walkers in the public phone box on The Green. At present, no clues to identity, though probably male.’

Finally Superintendent Branagh clapped her hands, like a primary school teacher organising her class.

‘We need to be able to eliminate some of these people from our inquiries,’ she said. ‘So let’s get on with it.’

* * *

‘I’m not sure whether that went well or not,’ said Villiers when they were back at their desks in the CID room. ‘Do you think you can get people here to come round to your opinion?’

‘Not in one meeting,’ said Cooper. ‘Not in a single day. Not even in a week.’

‘You need something more convincing, I guess.’

‘Yes. The trouble is, we can’t get a handle on the relationships between these people.’

‘These people? Oh, you don’t mean your colleagues now. You mean the inhabitants of Riddings.’

‘There’s Riddings Show on Saturday. They’re all going to be there. If Mrs Holland is right, that’s probably the one occasion in the whole year when we might get an opportunity to see them together.’

‘A chance to assess the strength of the enemy.’

Irvine signalled Cooper urgently.

‘We’ve got the CCTV footage from the Barrons,’ he said. ‘They have a camera pointing at the gates, and one at the garage.’

‘Okay, let’s run it.’

‘This is the first one, from around the right time, just before the attack. There’s nothing happening, though. The gates are closed. Not even any cars passing on Curbar Lane.’

‘Wait a minute. Did you see that?’

‘I didn’t see anything.’

‘A movement.’

‘At the gate?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Cooper stopped the recording, and ran it back a few seconds. There was still no one visible at the gate. But he was looking at the convex mirror on the gatepost. He ran the tape forward again, watching closely. Now he was sure of the movement. He zoomed in towards the gate. What
was
that reflected in the mirror? He squinted, tilted his head on one side, then sent the image to print, in case it was clearer on a hard copy. It might be his imagination, but he felt sure he was looking at the reflection of a human figure, twisted out of shape by the distorting effect of the mirror. One side of the body looked normal, but the other side was swollen and out of proportion where it was caught in the centre of the reflection. They were like the halves of two different people. Or something that wasn’t entirely human at all, but part man, part monster.

‘Add another unidentified individual to the file,’ said Cooper. ‘Along with our mystery man in the phone box.’

‘They could be one and the same person, of course.’

‘Maybe. The time is right, and the two locations are only a few yards apart.’

Cooper pictured the short stretch of road along Curbar Lane from The Green to Valley View. He wished there had been CCTV in Riddings, the way there was on streets in Edendale town centre. A suspect emerging from the phone box and lurking outside the Barrons’ gates would immediately have been picked up and identifiable.

He remembered Luke Irvine’s comment about using Google to get a view of Riddings. The HOLMES staff would have done it already; would have produced a detailed image of the village to plot sightings and incidents.

Cooper opened Google maps, and typed ‘Riddings’ into the search bar. In an instant he was looking at a detailed satellite view of the village, with all the roads overlaid on to the map. When he zoomed in, every house was visible, every field boundary, even cars that had been left parked on drives. He could see who had a swimming pool, and who had a tennis court. So much for walls and security cameras, when anyone with internet access could peer into your back garden and see the layout of your property.

These large, expensive homes and their grounds had spread out from the centre of the old village, transforming acres of rough ground into upmarket suburbia. But the satellite image made it obvious that the battle for dominance over the landscape wasn’t all one-sided. Above the village, the cover of bracken and heather could be seen encroaching on to the old field systems, like a brown tide. Dry-stone walls seemed to be no barrier to the spread of vegetation from the direction of Riddings Edge. Given time, it would engulf those fields, erasing all signs that civilisation had ever been here. But for now, humanity was still in control of the lower slopes.

He clicked on the full extent of the zoom facility and centred the screen on Riddings Lodge. Details were clear now that he hadn’t been able to see when he was right there on the ground. He could calculate the best angle of approach from the back fence to the house without coming in sight of a window. He could see exactly how far away the neighbouring houses were, and how dense the trees were in between. He was surprised to discover a manège at the rear of the Edson property, and a small paddock set out with jumps. Those hadn’t been evident from his brief tour of the boundary. But it was clear now that there was access to them from behind the stable block.

When he scrolled the map towards the north-east, the rough ground at the foot of Riddings Edge became visible. The transition from rock-strewn slope to landscaped garden was quite startling at this point. The entire colour and texture of the image changed suddenly along a dead-straight line, as if the village existed in a bubble, cut off from the wilderness beyond it by an invisible barrier.

Cooper was reminded of a science fiction story he’d once read, in which a small community found itself isolated from the rest of the world by an alien force field that appeared overnight. The story went on to explore how the inhabitants behind the barrier dealt with the isolation, the power struggles and vicious infighting that developed. New hierarchies formed in the absence of authority, law and order gradually collapsed, and individuals with extreme beliefs came into their own. One religious fanatic proclaimed that their enforced isolation was a punishment from God for the community’s sinful behaviour.