‘No, he’s just a thick-headed bumpkin, like he always was.’
Kate laid her hand on his arm and gazed out into the darkness. A light was on in the machinery shed, and a figure could just be made out moving around inside, its shadow thrown fitfully against the walls and out into the yard. Ben glimpsed the dog, Bess, wagging her tail at the unseen figure.
‘It’s me,’ said Kate. ‘I found a lump. The doctors say it’s possibly a malignant tumour so I’ve had a biopsy done and now I’m waiting on the results.’
‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’
‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘That’s an excellent prognosis if you catch this sort of thing early enough. I’m not worried. Well...’ She hesitated. ‘I am quite nervous, but I’m sure it will work out okay. Matt isn’t taking it so well.’
‘That’s why he’s like a bear with a sore head,’ said Ben. ‘He has no idea how to deal with these things. He never did have. Matt had no idea how to deal with Dad’s death, or Mum’s illness. It’s not his forte.’
‘You were right about him being physically strong. But his feelings are a lot more complicated, much more difficult to understand.’
‘He definitely has them, though. He just has difficulty finding a way to express them.’
‘You know him better than anyone, Ben,’ said Kate.
‘Do I? I was just thinking the same about you. Matt and I have grown apart over the years, especially since I moved to Edendale.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Kate, ‘I think you’re still the only one he can talk to about some things.’
‘Are you sure, Kate?’
‘Certain.’
She took the tea towel off him. Ben nodded, and left the kitchen. He went down the passage and out of the back door into the yard. It was dark on this side of the house, but he knew every inch of the place. He’d often wandered around these buildings in the dark as a child, and even right out into the fields among the animals. He’d loved the sense of solitude and openness to the sky. It was like stepping into a different world where all the cares of the day fell away from him. He wondered if it was the same for Matt, whether he still did that now to get away from his troubles, if that was what he was doing when he went out to the machinery shed to talk to the dog.
Ben found his brother sitting on an upturned oil drum, with the dog at his feet. Matt looked up without surprise when he came in.
‘I suppose Kate told you,’ he said.
‘Of course she did. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Matt shook his head. ‘It seemed too... personal.’
‘Well, what a surprise. But I am your brother.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just the thought of losing Kate. I can’t stand it.’
‘Lose her? It’s not like one of your cows getting sick, Matt. They’re not going to put her down with a humane killer. They can do wonders these days. If it is malignant, Kate herself says the outcome is generally pretty good for an early diagnosis like hers.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘Besides,’ said Ben, ‘she needs your support right now. Not having you stomping around in a bad temper all the time.’
Matt said nothing, but stroked the dog’s head thoughtfully. Ben could see it was an action that calmed him down.
‘You’re right, obviously,’ he said.
‘I know I am.’
Ben found another oil drum and rolled it over. They sat next to each for a few minutes in silence. This was the way it had often been between them, even when they were teenagers. It was in these long silences that they felt closest to each other.
‘Talk to me about something else,’ said Matt in the end.
‘Like what?’
‘You usually have some interesting case going on. A murder inquiry, something like that.’
‘You want to hear about a murder? Really?’
Ben mentally ran through his recent cases. He ruled out the death of Shane Curtis. An arson attack on a farmer’s barn would only send Matt off on another angry rant.
‘Do you remember the Annette Bower case?’ he said. ‘It was about ten years ago.’
That made Matt think. His memory was pretty good for scandalous events in the area. Farmers gossiped about things like that down at the market, or in the village pub.
‘Was that the woman whose body was never found?’
‘You got it.’
‘Was that actually a murder? I seem to remember—’
‘Her husband was charged, but it never got to court.’
‘That’s it. Somebody claimed to have seen her alive, so there couldn’t have been a murder.’
‘Well, perhaps not,’ said Ben. ‘On the other hand, perhaps there was.’
Matt snorted. ‘That’s what I like. It could be one thing, or it could be the other. No one really knows. It makes my life seem a lot more simple.’
Ben slapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’m glad about that.’
His brother blinked. ‘There was a lot of talk about that case. The woman’s disappearance.’
‘Annette Bower?’
‘Yes. Bakewell, wasn’t it? Everyone thought the husband was guilty.’
Ben sighed. ‘Yes, but there was too much reasonable doubt after the sighting of her.’
‘There was a lot of bad feeling going about. I remember it well, now. When he was let off, there were blokes who wanted to sort him out themselves, take justice into their own hands, so to speak.’
‘Vigilantes?’
‘If you want to call them that,’ said Matt. ‘Sometimes the system lets people down, you know. There was a feeling it had happened in that case. People thought that woman had been killed and no one would be punished for it. That’s wrong, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘It is wrong.’
He saw a light go out in the kitchen of the house. Kate still stood there in the darkness, staring out towards the shed, no doubt wondering what was going on, what the two brothers might be talking about. She’d be amazed if she knew.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Matt, ‘if that Bower bloke went missing himself one day.’
Ben turned and stared at his brother. His face was half hidden in the shadows of the shed, his head tilted down towards the dog, which gazed back at him with adoring eyes. Ben couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. It was so rare for his brother to come up with anything he could have called an insight.
A strong wind was blowing across the fields, bending the trees and sending the sheep scurrying to find shelter behind a stone wall. Both the trees and the sheep were used to this kind of wind up here. Even when the weather was calm, the trees stayed bent in a southerly direction, like mime artists pretending it was windy.
Instead of heading home to his cottage in Foolow, Ben Cooper had driven up the hill from Bridge End Farm and had kept driving until he found himself on the moors, right on the edge of the gritstone area known as the Dark Peak.
Although he’d been born and raised in the farming country of the White Peak, he’d always been drawn to the Dark Peak landscapes. The Dark Peak might look empty and desolate to some eyes, but it seemed to Cooper that it was just waiting for you to put something into it. It was a landscape for the imagination. His ancestors had peopled it with all kinds of mythical creatures and supernatural events; every rock had a story attached to it, every pool of water had its own legend. Everyone who’d lost their life out there was remembered, every incident had its place in the folk memory.
The changing colours of the season, the transformation of light as it passed across the hills, the shadows moving under the twisted rocky outcrops — everything spoke of a land that was alive and breathing. The Dark Peak was only empty for those who had no imagination. Cooper had sometimes been told that he had too much.