Bridge End Farm inextricably tied the Cooper family together. It had played that role for generations. For Ben, these trees and slopes were as familiar as family photographs. Barns where he’d played as a child, fields where he’d lain in the sun through his school holidays.
But tonight, standing in the yard at Bridge End had been like finding himself marooned on an island while the whole world rushed around him on important business that he had no part in. For the first time he became aware of how the family could be ignored in situations like this. The SOCOs and uniformed officers were inclined to treat them as if they didn’t exist. They seemed embarrassed to be spoken to, even avoiding eye contact, as if they were visiting a leper colony.
Dealing with the family was the worst job in a murder case. Worse than handling a dead body, more difficult than seeing the blood or sifting through the mess for evidence. Raw emotions from living people were much harder to cope with. Everyone said it. He’d said it himself. He’d never realised that it might be so obvious to the family that no one wanted to have anything to do with them, and didn’t want the trouble of explaining what was going on to people who might be in an emotionally fragile state. From this point of view, it was much more convenient to pretend the family didn’t exist, to walk around them without acknowledging them and tell yourself it was a question of professional detachment. The danger of getting too involved. That was what officers shied away from. But how did you judge where the fine line lay between detachment and insensitivity?
‘They’re only doing their job, I suppose,’ Kate had said, as if reading his thoughts.
Ben could tell she was trying to rationalise her own feelings. She didn’t want to make a scene, but could feel herself right on the edge.
She had rested against his shoulder, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She looked terrible.
Guiltily, Ben remembered what he’d said to Carol Villiers just a couple of days before. When people get as jumpy as this, something bad is likely to happen. You’ll see, there’ll be an idiot who decides to take the law into his own hands, and a random passer-by will get hurt. It’s inevitable, the way things are going.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Kate. ‘I just can’t see what there is I can do. How do I support Matt right now? How do I support him and the girls at the same time? Ben?’
He didn’t really know how to answer her. What were you supposed to say in these situations?
‘What are they saying happened exactly?’ he asked.
She wiped her eyes again, and took a ragged breath.
‘It seems Matt saw these two men coming across the paddock towards the house. They say he took the shotgun from the cabinet, loaded it and went out to challenge them. Then he fired at one of them, and hit him. But, Ben, they’re saying he shot the man when he was already running away. Shot him in the back.’
‘Matt wouldn’t do that,’ said Ben. ‘He wouldn’t shoot someone unless he had to, unless he was driven to defend himself or protect his family. He wouldn’t have shot a burglar who was running away. He’s my brother. I know he wouldn’t do that. So I’m with you, Kate. I’m on your side.’
Kate had looked at him then through red, swollen eyes.
‘That’s the trouble,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I hate to say it. It… it sounds so disloyal. But with the state of mind he’s been in recently, I think Matt actually could have done it.’
Even now, hours later, Ben still recoiled at the shock of that tentative confession from his sister-in-law. He was very fond of Kate. In fact, he’d always liked her, ever since the time he first met her, his older brother’s new girlfriend, brought home to meet the parents. She had always seemed so balanced, so supportive. He’d often envied his brother, felt Matt had found exactly the right partner. He’d wondered many times if he would ever find someone like Kate.
But for her to tell him that… It showed what a degree of trust she had in him. He had a suspicion that she would never dare say it to anyone else. She probably shouldn’t have said it to him, in the circumstances. And wasn’t it ironic that she seemed to trust him more than his own brother did?
He wondered how Matt was coping right now. Not well, that was certain. He could barely imagine his brother in a police cell. It was a picture that just didn’t make any sense, an impossible optical illusion, like one of those paintings by Escher, where stairs ran upside down. It did not compute. Of all people, Matt was made to be outdoors, not to be locked up away from the daylight.
There were some choices you made that you could never go back on. A split-second decision that changed your life. That moment for Matt had come when his finger tensed on the trigger of the shotgun. Once the hammer had begun its acceleration towards the firing pin, there had been no going back.
Some time early in the morning, Superintendent Branagh had made an appearance at the farm, looking grim-faced.
‘You can’t be involved, Ben,’ she said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
Cooper couldn’t remember her ever calling him Ben before.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.
‘We’re bringing in a DCI from Derby to head the inquiry. It will all be handled properly.’
‘He’ll need local liaison.’
Branagh shook her head. ‘Not you, anyway.’
A bit later, when he saw Diane Fry walk into his field of vision, Cooper blinked and looked at her wearily. Perhaps he ought to be surprised to see her here at the farm. But nothing made any impact on him any more, after the night he’d just gone through.
‘Ben,’ she said.
‘What are you doing, Diane? Aren’t you off back to the working group?’
She hesitated. Cooper had hardly ever seen Fry hesitant about giving a reply. She was always ready with a sharp comeback, or a quick put-down. Why should she hesitate? What was it that she was reluctant to tell him?
‘I’ve been given another assignment,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
Cooper was staring at her, trying to get her to meet his eye. But she looked deliberately away from him.
‘You can guess what it is,’ she said finally.
His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing on her now. She seemed even more unreal than any of the other individuals coming and going in the farmyard. For a moment he wondered if he might actually be hallucinating and had imagined her.
But then he nodded.
‘Local liaison,’ he said, ‘for the DCI from Derby.’
‘Right first time.’
Fry had been told to meet the team from Derby at the entrance to Bridge End Farm. She had visited this farm just once before. Not that she remembered a great deal about it. One farm was pretty much like another, wasn’t it? Mud, more mud, and all those pervasive animal smells that seemed to cling to your clothes for weeks.
When she’d come here previously, Ben Cooper had actually been living at the farm. His mother had been alive then, too. With Matt Cooper’s two daughters, that had meant three generations of the Cooper family making their home together. For Fry, it had seemed strange to see people doing that willingly. In her experience, it was something a family did only when it was forced on them by necessity.
But the Coopers had always been a type of person beyond her experience. Who knew what went on in a close-knit family group like that, with their own peculiar ways of doing things? Especially out here in these remote farmsteads, where no outsider could have any idea what was going on, and shotguns were so readily available. Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that a man like Matt Cooper had ended up shooting somebody. Maybe the real surprise was that it didn’t happen more often.