The chicken had lost its flavour by that point in the evening. Diane had felt trapped in her own apartment, with no means of escaping whatever her sister was about to inflict on her.
‘The fact is,’ said Angie, ‘I fell in with some very bad people in Sheffield. The worst kind you can imagine. I was an idiot, of course. I was at risk all the time. But then I did something even more dangerous — I got recruited as an informer. That was when Ben Cooper traced me. It almost caused disaster for a major operation the NCA were planning.’
‘The NCA?’
‘As in the National Crime Agency.’
‘I know who they are. But Angie—’
Her sister had held up a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘I’ve got to tell you now, Di. Because there’s a good chance I’m going to need your help.’
Sitting in Burger King, Fry sighed at the memory of the previous evening. She pushed her meal aside, finished her smoothie and stood up. Immediately her table was claimed. A young man with tousled hair, sideburns and heavy framed glasses sat down across from a dumpy young woman with a plump face and dark hair.
In the women’s toilets at the service area the walls were covered with adverts for insurance policies and bladder control products. A poster near the door encouraged her to text a donation to a charity in Africa.
Fry wondered what kind of adverts were on the walls of the men’s toilets. Something about cars or football, she guessed.
She walked back outside, pressed her key fob, and saw her Audi’s lights blink. Her car, winking at her in the darkness.
14
Ben Cooper felt himself growing calmer on the way to Bridge End Farm. The landscape always helped him to do that.
The Peak District moors had turned purple in late August, the swatches of heather coming magnificently into flower over acres of apparently empty moorland. Now, down in the valleys, the trees were starting to change colour too. They were still heavily laden with foliage, and they lumbered clumsily over the road in the strong winds. In a few weeks’ time their leaves would be yellow and bronze. Autumn would strip them and scatter the dead leaves across the tarmac surface in golden tides.
The skeletal bareness of winter would be here soon, thought Cooper. Much too soon. The months when the ground was sodden, paths were churned into muddy quagmires, and the air felt chill and damp. For Cooper, every season had its moods and its appeal. But there was a period after Christmas and the New Year when even the Peak District felt miserable. He wondered if there was some event from his past that made him feel so down when late January and February arrived. Or did everyone feel that way?
The fields around Bridge End Farm looked different this year. Ben’s sister-in-law Kate had persuaded his brother Matt to make a change from the traditional black silage bags. Reluctantly, he’d ordered a roll of pink silotite bale wrap and joined the trend for pink bags in support of breast cancer research. The field where the bales were stacked looked much brighter, the pink wrap gleaming in the sun next to the black bags. A couple of tourists had stopped their car up on the road to take photographs.
The swallows that nested every year in the barns at Bridge End were getting ready to leave. The house martins would stay for a while longer, but the swallows would be heading off on their journey back to Africa. It was hard to imagine something so tiny and fragile making an incredible journey like that, and returning next spring to the exact same spot. What resilience and determination it must take.
Cooper couldn’t think of many people who had that sort of single-minded determination. You had to need something very badly, didn’t you? What was it the swallows needed? To come back to their home surely. That was something everyone wanted. Had Annette Bower needed it badly enough?
At the end of dinner at Bridge End Farm that evening, Matt Cooper put down his knife and fork with a clatter on his plate.
‘You’re going to what?’ he said.
‘The opera,’ repeated Ben.
‘The chuffin’ opera? What’s happened to you, brother?’
Kate frowned at her husband. ‘Watch your language, Matt.’
The two girls giggled. They weren’t shocked any more. They were teenagers, and they thought their parents were ridiculous.
‘Besides,’ said Kate, ‘there’s nothing wrong with the opera. A lot of people enjoy it.’
‘We’ve never gone to the opera,’ said Matt.
‘Well, perhaps I’d like to some time. Have you ever thought of that?’
Matt scowled. ‘No, I haven’t.’
Ben studied his brother for a moment. Matt was never the sunniest of characters, but he’d been in a particularly bad mood all evening. He’d been curt when Ben arrived at the farm, then monosyllabic over dinner, and finally short-tempered over trivialities. Something was definitely wrong.
‘I’m sure it will be wonderful.’ Kate began to clear plates off the table. ‘I hope you enjoy yourself, Ben.’
Ben stood up. ‘I’ll help you with the washing-up.’
The girls disappeared to their rooms and, as he walked across the passage to the kitchen, he heard Matt switch on the TV. Kate handed him a tea towel, but didn’t seem to want to meet his eye.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t expect that to cause a family disagreement,’ said Ben, though inside he felt as much like laughing as Amy and Josie. ‘What does my brother have against opera?’
‘It’s nothing to do with the opera,’ said Kate.
‘Oh.’
They worked together silently for a while. Through the kitchen window, Ben could see the outlines of the farm buildings in the darkness, standing out against a clear, starlit sky. Beyond them he could make out the shape of the hill that he’d become so familiar with growing up at Bridge End. He couldn’t even remember the name of that hill now. It was probably something ‘low’, he supposed. But as a family, they’d always just called it ‘the hill’. It was so much a part of their lives that it didn’t need a name. It was their hill.
Out in the yard, he heard the dog bark. Not a warning of intruders, but a welcoming bark. He guessed that Matt had gone out of the house. He’d left the TV on and disappeared to where he felt most comfortable — out there in the open, with his tractor and his dog.
Kate looked up. ‘Matt is very worried,’ she said eventually.
Ben realised she’d been waiting for her husband to go out, so that there was no chance of him overhearing their conversation. She knew Matt so well. Probably better than Ben did himself now.
‘Matt always worries,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t be happy unless he had something to worry about.’
She smiled sadly. ‘This is different, Ben.’
‘So what is he worried about this time? Something to do with the farm, I suppose? Are the yields down this year? Has the price of feed gone through the roof? He hasn’t mentioned anything.’
‘No, it’s nothing like that.’
‘Nothing to do with the farm?’
‘No.’
Now Ben was getting concerned himself. Matt hardly thought of anything, apart from the farm. Well, except his family, of course. His heart sank, and he put down the tea towel.
‘Is it one of the girls?’ he said. ‘Is something wrong with Amy or Josie? Because you know I’d do anything—’
She shook her head. ‘Not that either.’
‘Well, it can’t be Matt,’ he said.
Kate laughed. ‘Why not?’
‘Well, he’s as strong as an ox. He never has anything wrong with him. Not physically anyway. He just needs fuelling occasionally and he keeps going on for ever, like his old Massey Ferguson.’
Now she looked shocked. ‘What do you mean “not physically”? Are you suggesting your brother is psychologically unstable?’