At least she had learned a few figures to use. Sixteen thousand officers and police staff were employed across the East Midlands region, serving over five and a half million people in an area of sixteen thousand square kilometres, half the size of Belgium. She had no concept of how big Belgium was, but it made a change from measuring size in comparison to Wales or a football pitch, which also meant nothing to her. Statistics were good. They had a nice, clean feel, free of the messy ambiguities and uncertainties that came with the package when you were dealing with human beings. If you trotted statistics out at the right moment, they impressed people. And they were grateful, because you gave them something they could write down and memorise. It allowed them to convince themselves that they hadn’t just wasted the last two hours of their life. Just as Fry was trying to convince herself now, in fact.
During the course of the day, someone had also claimed that the population of the East Midlands region was growing thirty-three per cent faster than elsewhere in England. That ‘elsewhere’ had worried her. It didn’t seem to mean anything. It wasn’t the same as ‘thirty-three per cent faster than anywhere else in England’. That would be more specific, a claim that could be checked against the official figures. But ‘elsewhere’? Where was that, for heaven’s sake? Elsewhere was nowhere. Elsewhere might be some place, but it was nowhere definite. So the region was growing faster than the Isles of Scilly, maybe? Or the Outer Hebrides?
It was a vagueness that bothered her as she drove back towards Derbyshire, crossing the M1 junction at Heath. She couldn’t make use of a fuzzy claim like that. She would be challenged on it immediately. Now she was starting to feel cheated. Who had perpetrated that fraud? Which member of the Implementing Strategic Change working group? She had the urge to go back and grab whoever it was by the lapels and make them justify the statement. By the lapels? Yes, she was sure it must have been a man. A man wearing a suit and a brightly coloured tie. Tomorrow she would identify them and sort them out.
Her heart sank at the thought. Tomorrow. Another day of brown-paper workshop. And it was still only the middle of the week.
Next week she had to organise a Challenge Day to examine the various options. Damn it, she could hear the comments now. She could imagine the derision that would be flying around the CID room in Edendale, feel the buckets of scorn dripping on her head as she invited her former colleagues to her Challenge Day. Gavin Murfin would laugh so much he’d choke on a pork pie or have a heart attack.
Fry stared ahead at the approaching Derbyshire signs. How on earth had she got herself into this mess? Her dreams and ambitions in the police service had never involved becoming mired in jargon, or trapped in working-group meetings. Right now, she felt as though her career was already in its grave and being buried under an avalanche of consultation documents.
By the end of the day, a mantra had been drummed into her. Joint thinking, joint working. It echoed around her skull right now, as she drove towards Derbyshire.
Of all the phrases she might want in her head, that wasn’t the one. During her time in E division, there were so many things that hadn’t been said, relationships left unexplained. She wondered if anyone would bother about her, now that she’d been sidelined. Or would they just forget her as quickly as they could, let someone slip in and replace her quietly and completely, as if she’d never been there?
If only she knew what they really thought of her. If only once someone in Edendale had said: We’ll be sorry to see you go.
7
Things were changing at Bridge End Farm. Well, that was nothing new. The farming industry had been in a state of change for decades. But now the pace was speeding up so much that it had become a revolution, instead of evolution.
Dairy farmers like Matt Cooper were leaving the industry every week. It had become inevitable, ever since supermarkets reduced the price per litre of milk to the same as the cost of producing it. It had become impossible to make a living from milk production. Instead of the UK being self-sufficient, a large percentage of milk supplies were imported from Denmark or the Netherlands. Presumably those were countries where the market still allowed dairy farmers to earn a livelihood.
Bridge End Farm stood five miles out of Edendale, in a stretch of the Eden Valley where the land was good. The farm was reached down a rough, winding track that was dry and dusty in the summer, full of potholes that had been hastily repaired with compacted earth and the odd half-brick. When winter came, the first heavy rains would turn the track into a river, washing mud into the farmyard as water came rushing down the hillsides in torrents.
But now, in August, the tyres of Cooper’s Toyota threw up clouds of dust as he bounced the last few yards and rattled over a cattle grid into the yard.
The yard was still wet, where Matt had hosed away the freshly dropped cow manure left by the herd on their way back to pasture after afternoon milking. Ben had noticed that he wasn’t quite so particular as he used to be about cleaning up. Sometimes he even left the job until morning if he was called away to do something else.
But tonight there were visitors. Kate would never have let her husband get away with leaving the yard dirty. She knew that Ben was bringing Liz. There were a lot of things that Kate knew, without anyone having to tell her. Ben always went to his sister-in-law if he wanted to know anything. And he was fairly sure that his nieces, Amy and Josie, were growing up just like their mum. Wise beyond their years, those girls. They missed nothing.
He parked close to the farmhouse, opposite the Dutch barn and the tractor shed where Matt’s latest John Deere stood. An old grey Fergie used to live in the shed, too – Matt’s pride and joy, the object he had lavished more time and attention on than he did Kate. But the Ferguson had gone the way of so many things. It was too much of a luxury. The cost of its restoration just couldn’t be justified in the farm accounts.
Matt could often be found tinkering with a bit of machinery at this time of the evening, but there was no sign of him outside. Ben felt sure he would have been cajoled into getting cleaned up for the evening and changing his clothes, and would now be waiting uncomfortably in the sitting room, itching to get his boots and cap back on, but too obedient to Kate’s wishes to rebel.
Of course, he wouldn’t have done it if it was just his brother arriving at the farm for dinner. But Liz was treated almost like visiting royalty. It always made Ben smile, yet feel the tug of grief and sadness at the same time. This was just the way his mother would have welcomed her, if she’d still been alive. But she hadn’t lived to see this moment.
As always, the big farmhouse kitchen smelled of cooking. Tonight he scented herbs and garlic, and the aroma of meat roasting in the oven of the range.
Matt was starting to look tired and middle-aged. Ben worried about the amount of stress his brother was coping with.
‘Well, I could have done without the extra work today,’ said Matt. ‘I mean, it’s harvest time. I’m out in the fields all hours as it is.’
‘Problem?’
‘Some bloody ramblers climbed the wall in the bottom field and knocked the coping stones down. They couldn’t be bothered walking down to the stile, I suppose. It’s all of a hundred yards away, after all. Ridiculous. They think open access means they can do whatever damage they like, and poor sods like me will go round after them picking up the pieces. If I’d caught them at it…’
He trailed off. It was a habit he had got into recently, and came with a sly sideways glance at his younger brother, a look that suggested he was afraid of saying too much. Ben was beginning to hate that look. It seemed to suggest more loudly than any words that his brother didn’t really trust him.