Ben had always known it would be impossible to escape his father’s shadow completely, unless he transferred from E Division. Sergeant Joe Cooper’s memory would always be there, in Edendale, imprinted on the walls of the police station. Literally, in some places. In the chief superintendent’s office at West Street, there was a large framed photograph of dozens of solemn men sitting or standing in long rows. They were the entire uniformed strength of Edendale section, pictured during a visit by some member of the royal family in the 1980s. On the second row, as a young sergeant, was his father. Downstairs, in the reception area, a memorial hung on the wall near the front counter – a plaque commemorating the death of Sergeant Joe Cooper, killed while on duty. Yes, he would always be there, cemented into the very fabric of E Division.
Eventually, in a few hundred years, Sergeant Joe Cooper’s name might be worn away from this headstone by the winter frosts and the rains lashing down the Eden Valley. But for now, the letters were still clear and precise, with sharply chiselled edges. Life might be brief and transient. But death was written in stone.
Ben shivered. It was that cold shudder again. Perhaps it was just a result of standing on this hillside surrounded by death, an effect of all these graves around him. But he felt an uneasy sensation that somewhere out there, a disaster was about to happen. No, not quite that. It had happened already.
He spent a few quiet minutes standing by his mother’s grave, thinking through everything that was happening in his life, hoping that she would understand. Then he walked back through the cemetery, reaching the exit just before the gates were closed for the night.
When he reached the car, he paused and looked back. He knew his father’s grave would no longer be discernible from here. It had long since merged into the anonymous rows of headstones, swallowed up among Edendale‘s dead.
In his flat at 8 Welbeck Street, Cooper had finally fallen asleep in his armchair in front of the TV, with his cat purring in the crook of his arm, well fed and content. When his phone rang, he jerked awake in panic, knocking the cat off the chair in a protesting heap.
‘Yes?’
‘Sarge, it’s Luke Irvine.’
‘Oh, Luke. What is it?’
‘Reports are starting to come in of another incident. I thought you’d want to know straight away.’
‘Not in Riddings?’
‘No. Further away, on the other side of Edendale.’
‘Can it be connected to the other attacks in our inquiry?’ asked Cooper.
‘I don’t know at this stage. But everyone in the division is jumpy. The DI is on alert, maybe even the superintendent.’
‘Everyone knows it’s impossible to predict where and when the next attack will be.’
‘If that’s what it is.’
‘What do you mean? Is this an aggravated burglary, or not?’
‘There are no details yet, Ben. Just the 999 call so far. We’ll have to wait for the FOAs to report in. Sorry, that’s all I have.’
Cooper saw that he had another call waiting.
‘Got to go,’ he said. ‘Keep in touch if you get anything more definite, Luke.’ And he pressed the key to accept the new call.
At first there was only silence on the line. No, not silence – a series of strange, disturbing sounds thudding and yelping in the background. Noises he couldn’t identify, but which made his heart lurch and his throat constrict with fear.
‘Hello? Hello? Who is that?’
Finally a voice, barely distinguishable. It sounded muffled, oddly choked by distress and panic.
‘Ben? Ben, you’ve got to come to the farm.’
‘Kate? Is that Kate? I can barely hear you. What’s happened? Is it one of the girls?’
‘No, no. It’s Matt.’
There was a long pause on the line, with Kate quietly sobbing, and Cooper’s mind racing as all the possibilities went through his head. He was picturing an accident with a piece of farm machinery, his brother trapped and crushed under a toppled tractor, his leg caught and mangled in the blades of a combine harvester. His thoughts moved so rapidly that they’d flashed through all the scenarios and reached the scene in hospital, Matt on a trolley in A amp;E, being wheeled straight into theatre for emergency surgery to save a severed limb. He felt sick with the immediacy of the horror and pain and blood that he knew awaited him at Bridge End Farm.
Time must have stood still for a moment, because it all went round and round inside his head before Kate finally spoke again and dropped the bombshell that turned Cooper’s life over.
‘Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s Matt – he’s shot somebody.’
22
Sunday
The light of dawn came slowly to Bridge End Farm. The hills to the east hid the morning sun and kept the farm in shadow, even while the valley below it was already bathed in light. Ben Cooper shivered in the chill of the paddock behind the house. Within the next hour or so, the dew would begin to evaporate, forming a mist between the dry-stone walls, leaving him floating in space, half in sun and half lost in a haze.
He’d just finished helping Kate to pack up the car and drive away from the farm with the girls, still dazed and tearful with incomprehension. She was taking them to her sister’s, who lived over the hills near Holmfirth.
After a mad race from Edendale, Ben had arrived at Bridge End just as the ambulance departed. He had been in time to see Matt, too, handcuffed and being guided into the back of a police car. His brother had looked pale and dishevelled, unshaven and somehow smaller and older than he had ever appeared before.
In the darkness of the early hours, the lights of emergency vehicles filling the farmyard had turned the scene into a stage set. Bridge End had looked alien, an artificial setting for a TV melodrama. For the first time, the farmhouse he’d grown up in looked totally unfamiliar, a mere facade under flickering stage lights. At that time of night, the blinding flicker and glare had emphasised the depths of blackness beyond the farmyard, reinforcing the impression that all these people were simply actors. Somewhere out there in the darkness was the real world, where this kind of thing didn’t happen.
No wonder he found it impossible to believe the official account of the night’s events. Somebody must have made it all up. It was one more incredible story released on the world, with the inevitable tragic outcome.
It was only when Kate had told him the tale herself that he was forced to accept the truth. His sister-in-law was a real, living person, a victim dragged into the drama against her will.
‘It was about midnight,’ she’d said. ‘We were in bed, asleep. Well, I’m not sure Matt was asleep. He’s been sleeping very badly recently, you know?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Anyway, he got up, without me noticing. I woke a few minute later, and realised he wasn’t there. I thought he’d just gone to the bathroom. But then I heard noises…’
‘Outside? Or in the house?’
‘No, outside in the yard. I knew there were people out there. And suddenly I was frightened. I jumped out of bed to go to the girls’ rooms, to see they were all right. But then…’
‘Then?’
‘I heard the shots.’
As he watched the sun come up over the hill, Ben realised finally how exhausted he was. His skin felt dry and gritty, as if he’d been wading through sand. His eyes burned, and a dull ache throbbed deep in his skull. The exhaustion wasn’t just physical, though. It was emotional, too.
Ben had always sensed the police service being blamed by members of his family for the death of his father. Now the police were taking the blame for the arrest of his brother. And he had become part of the police. As far as his family and their friends were concerned, he was the police.
The one thing he couldn’t do – couldn’t possibly do, in any circumstances – was let his brother get sent to prison. The prospect was unimaginable. He couldn’t be seen to stand by as that happened, let alone appear to be helping the process along. He would have to resign from the force before that happened. Yes, his job was important to him. But family came first.