‘Well, aren’t you going to offer me a coffee or something, Sis? Even Ben offered me a coffee, when I was at his place.’
Fry didn’t move. Even her shuffling stopped. She waited for her sister to meet her eye, but Angie wouldn’t look up.
‘You went to Ben Cooper’s house?’
Angie smiled at her toes in a conspiratorial way, as if they’d done something quite clever.
‘I only stayed there the one night,’ she said.
Fry clenched her fingers until her nails dug into her palms. ‘I don’t think I want to know this.’
Angie shrugged. ‘It’s not important. Ask me about it when you feel a bit more interested.’
Fry opened her mouth, shifted her feet again, and noticed the pain in the palms of her hands.
‘How do you take your coffee?’ she said.
For some reason, Angie was still smiling. But now she looked up at her younger sister with a knowing look in her eyes.
‘We’ve got a lot to learn about each other,’ she said. ‘Haven’t we, Sis?’
Diane Fry left the DI’s office aware that she’d absorbed only part of what he’d been telling her. And that wasn’t like her at all. She prided herself on a good memory for details when she was on the job. At home, life might pass in a haze some of the time, but not when she was at work. She was sharp, on the ball, a cut above the rest of them in CID. Well, usually she was. Maybe she was sickening for something.
It was remembering that day in Withens that had distracted her. She still felt the shock of the moment that she’d turned to see Ben Cooper walking away and her sister standing there in the road instead, as if fifteen years had vanished in a blink of an eye. Since that day, she hadn’t been able to think of her sister without thinking of Cooper, too. The bastard had intruded himself into her private life like a splinter under her fingernail. She would have to find out the truth from him one day. Until she had an explanation of his involvement, there was a missing connection. And without it, the presence of her sister in her life again just didn’t add up.
Pausing in the corridor, Fry pulled out her phone and dialled Cooper’s number again before she could stop to reconsider. But all she got was the recorded voice telling her his number was still unobtainable.
She thrust the phone back into her pocket and kept walking. That was the problem with feelings — they could be so ambiguous. It didn’t make any sense at all to feel disappointed and relieved at the same time.
‘The Devil’s Arse,’ said the older of the two girls, with conviction. ‘We want to go up the Devil’s Arse.’
Ben Cooper smiled at an old lady who turned to stare at them. He tried to get a sort of tolerant amusement into the smile, mingled with embarrassed apology. The old lady lowered her head and leaned to whisper something to a friend supporting herself on a walking frame. Cooper flushed, imagining the worst possible thing she could be saying.
They’re not mine, he’d wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t.
Although it was a Monday, the streets of Edendale were packed. The summer holiday season had started in the Peak District. It was sunny enough for the old ladies to stroll from their excursion coach to the tea rooms, as well as for younger visitors to shed some of their clothes and sprawl on the grass near the river. Cooper found it too humid in town when the weather was warm. He preferred to be on higher ground, where he could feel a bit of cool breeze coming over the moors.
In the pedestrianized area of Clappergate, they weaved their way between the benches and stone flowerbeds, wrought-iron lampposts and bicycle racks. A little way ahead was the Vine Inn and the brass plaque outside it that he knew so welclass="underline" In memory of Sergeant Joseph Cooper of the DerbyshireConstabulary, who died in the course of his duty nearhere.
Cooper tried walking a bit more quickly. Perhaps if he could get away from the crowds, he’d feel a bit easier.
‘That’s rude,’ said Josie. ‘I don’t say rude words.’
‘“The Devil’s Arse” is what they call it,’ said Amy. ‘So it can’t be rude.’
‘It is.’
‘It’s not. Just you ask Uncle Ben.’
Cooper stopped. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said brightly.
‘Why can’t we ask you now?’ said Amy.
‘No, I mean we’re going there tomorrow.’
‘Peak Cavern,’ said Josie. ‘That’s what it’s called properly. We’ll go to Peak Cavern.’
Cooper was sweating. And it wasn’t just the humidity either. Talking to his nieces was like walking through a minefield these days. He didn’t want Matt and Kate accusing him of teaching the girls to say ‘arse’. But he could already hear them saying it when they went home to the farm tonight. Uncle Ben says we can say ‘arse’, Dad. Just great.
‘It’s your day off today,’ said Amy, who was the older of the two and knew CID shift patterns and duty rosters better than he did himself.
‘I’ve got two days off this time,’ he said. ‘So we can go tomorrow.’
‘But …’
‘Yes?’
‘But what if you get phoned up?’
Cooper sighed. He felt a surge of sympathy for all the family men on E Division. This must be what it was like for them all the time. The constant cries of: ‘Why weren’t you there, Dad?’, ‘It’s supposed to be your day off,’ and ‘What if you get phoned up?’
‘If I get phoned up,’ said Cooper, ‘we’ll go some other time. I promise.’
He could almost hear the girls weighing up the value of his promise, and judging its reliability. They were far too wise to trust any promise that an adult made, but they wanted to believe him. He opened his mouth to add: I’ve never let you down before, have I? But he knew it wouldn’t be true.
A party of hikers went by. Their clothes were dazzling, and their walking poles the latest anti-shock design. Getting kitted up for a day on the Derbyshire hills was becoming an exercise in fashion awareness, and all the accessories had to be exactly right. Soon, people would be choosing their rucksacks to match the colour of their eyes.
A white-haired man walked towards them on the pedestrianized area. The first thing Cooper noticed was his comb-over. Every time he saw one, Ben prayed that he’d have enough sense not to do it himself when he was losing his hair. Be bald, wear a hat — anything but a comb-over.
The man was wearing a silver-grey sports jacket and a blue silk shirt that hung outside his trousers. He had dazzling white trainers and a white toothbrush moustache that was probably the height of fashion when it had been black. His hair was long, too, even allowing for the requirements of his comb-over. He looked like an ageing British character actor playing the role of a faded gigolo.
Cooper was so distracted by the shopper that at first he didn’t notice a man in a security company uniform gesturing to him from the doorway of W.H. Smith’s. He was a retired police officer who had moved into the expanding private security business, so now he got a better uniform to wear.
‘I think there’s a couple of those Hanson brothers just been in here,’ he said. ‘Right toe-rags, they are. There’s a warrant out for both of them. I don’t know them myself, but it looked like them from the pictures.’
Cooper stopped. ‘I know them, but …’
‘You might want to keep an eye out for them. They’re probably somewhere down near the High Street.’
Amy and Josie were looking at the man and listening with interest.
‘Look, I’m off duty,’ said Cooper.
The security man noticed the girls for the first time. ‘Oh, right. You’ve got your kids with you.’
‘They’re not mine, actually.’
‘I see.’
‘They’re my nieces. My brother’s children.’
Cooper had realized before he even stopped to speak to him that the ex-bobby was just the right age to have worked with his father. He found himself fidgeting immediately, anxious to move on before the reminiscences began, the stories of late turns together as young PCs. Because they would be followed very quickly by the assurances of how much everyone had respected and loved Sergeant Joe Cooper, and how devastated they’d all been when it happened.