‘Divorced, eh? Did that happen before or after the lottery windfall?’
‘Good question. It would make a big difference to the wife’s divorce settlement, wouldn’t it?’
‘Absolutely. So what’s the answer?’
‘Before.’
‘Unlucky. She’s got to be resentful. Thinking if only she’d hung on a bit longer, all this could be hers.’
‘It seems Mr Edson has one of the highest levels of security in Riddings, too. He possibly has the most money, and certainly the largest collection of valuables – the house is packed with them.’
‘I wonder if he feels vulnerable. He might expect to be the next target.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, he might. Well, that’s Edson. But the striking thing is that nobody seems to have had any objections to the Hollands. Not that we’ve heard about.’
‘Interesting. So that leaves us without a motive for them being a target on Thursday night.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Cooper.
‘I mean, we are thinking along the lines of someone in Riddings being responsible for these attacks, rather than the legendary Savages everyone else is out chasing? I have got that right, Ben?’
Cooper threw up his hands in submission. ‘You’ll say I’m mad, I suppose.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Everyone else will.’
He looked over his shoulder, but Irvine was on the phone and paying no attention to them.
‘Superintendent Branagh seems to like you anyway,’ said Villiers. ‘Unless you’ve got something on her?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘I‘ve just learned not to rub people up the wrong way all the time.’
‘The way I do, you mean?’
‘I didn’t say that, but…’
‘I’m getting on really well with Gavin Murfin, at least.’
‘Are you?’ said Cooper. ‘I hadn’t noticed. But, well… Gavin is okay.’
‘And the youngsters are great.’
Cooper nodded. ‘It’s a good team.’
‘I think I can fit in here, Ben.’
‘I’m sure you can. I wasn’t suggesting anything else.’
‘I know I’ve come from a different background. Gavin’s been a copper almost all his life, it seems. Luke and Becky are just starting out, so they have most of their experience to come. But me – I’ve seen and done things they never will, and to be honest I wouldn’t ever want them to. That sort of experience leaves a mark on you. It can’t be helped. Counselling only achieves so much. That’s just the way it is. I’m sure you must see a big difference in me from the way I was before I joined up.’
‘Not that much.’
‘Oh, come on. I’m harder, more callous, less understanding of others. I’m sure that’s the way it must seem.’
‘I-’
She held up a hand. ‘No, you don’t need to say anything. There’s no point in trying to contradict me. I know it’s true. But I’m trying. I really am trying to get back into humanity, to join the everyday world like an ordinary human being again. I just need a bit of time. And perhaps a bit of help now and then?’
Cooper swallowed, touched by her confidence.
‘You’ve got it, Carol. Any time you need it.’
‘Thank you, Ben.’
She paused, scanned the CID room as if something had caught her attention. But there was nothing to see, except Irvine.
‘So, Riddings,’ she said. ‘If your theory is correct…’
‘It’s not exactly a theory,’ said Cooper hastily. ‘Not a theory.’
‘A feeling, then. An instinct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s good. You should trust your instincts.’
‘Not everyone says that.’
She shrugged. ‘But if your feeling is right, the answer lies among the residents of the village themselves. A personal motive for the attack on the Barrons – and perhaps on the Hollands?’
‘I don’t know. That could have been different.’
‘Really? Well, we need a link, then. A definite connection. Somewhere there must be a name, or a combination of names, that explains everything.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’
Cooper frowned. He ran his eye down the list of names he’d just written down. It included everyone who lived or worked in the neighbourhood of the Barrons and the Hollands in Curbar Lane. Not just residents, but the housekeeper at Riddings Lodge, the cleaners, the man who maintained the drives. But there was still something missing.
‘Luke,’ he called. ‘Did we get a list of employees from that gardening firm working Riddings?’
‘Yes, it’s here.’
Cooper scanned the list that Irvine gave him. Adrian Summers of AJS Gardening Services had listed half a dozen names, including two or three that sounded East European.
‘Is this all of them?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘I’m wondering where Dave is,’ said Cooper.
‘Dave who?’
Cooper looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Dave?’ echoed Villiers.
Cooper shrugged. ‘A gardener, I think.’
It suddenly dawned on Cooper that he hadn’t told Villiers about the letter he’d been given by Erin Byrne. She knew about the phone calls to the Eden Valley Times, but the letter had been lying on the back seat of his car, forgotten while they were visiting Riddings Show.
He ran back down to the car park to fetch it, feeling a mounting excitement that there might actually be a connection after all. On the face of it, the message seemed very trivial, even meaningless. But it must have some significance. Yes, it must.
‘Well, I know that symbol,’ said Villiers, putting her finger on the horizontal line with the arrow beneath it.
‘You do?’
‘It’s some kind of surveyor’s mark. The Ordnance Survey use it, and people like that. It’s meant to indicate a point where a specific measurement can be taken. I think it’s called a benchmark.’
‘A surveyor’s mark? That sounds educated. But the words themselves look as though they’ve been written by somebody illiterate.’
‘I know. It’s a puzzle. Sheffeild Rode? Which way is the Sheffield Road?’
‘Well, from Riddings, it’s over the edge,’ said Cooper thoughtfully. ‘Over the edge…’
‘What?’
‘That was originally the way to reach towns and cities to the east of the Peak District, for travellers and packhorse trains. Way back, before the turnpike roads were built.’
‘They went over Riddings Edge?’
‘Yes, over the edge, across the flats and on to Big Moor. Remember the packhorse way we used on Thursday night?’
‘Of course. But across that moor? It’s just a wasteland. No roads, no landmarks, no signposts, nothing but heather and bracken. How could that be the road to Sheffield?’
‘Believe it or not, there were half a dozen trackways and trade routes up there, all converging on a pre-Roman road. It was a major east-to-west route through the Middle Ages, right up to the end of the nineteenth century. And it’s not true to say there are no signposts.’
‘Really?’
Cooper was staring at the symbol that Villiers had said was a surveyor’s mark, and at the scrawled message Sheffeild Rode.
‘And you know what?’ he said. ‘I think I’ve actually seen something like this up there.’
‘On Riddings Edge?’
‘Not on the edge itself – but behind it, out on Big Moor.’
Diane Fry had found that interviews often became a game of cat and mouse between interviewer and interviewee, a test to see which of them could make the other lose his temper. When a suspect was provoked to anger, that was when he gave the most away. Unless his solicitor was able to rein him in.
Mick Brammer had decided to decline the advice of his legal representative. He didn’t know enough to appreciate the tactic of a repeated ‘no comment’. He thought the fault wasn’t his – so why shouldn’t he say so?
‘Ade signed me up for the job,’ he said. ‘It was just a one-off, that’s all. Cash in hand, and nothing more said about it. Fair enough, I thought. You can’t turn down a chance to make a few quid these days.’