‘Okay. Keep at it.’
Cooper started the car and drove on. He really didn’t like Mr Gamble being missing. He liked even less the knowledge that before long, someone was going to ask him about Gamble. Either his DI or Superintendent Branagh would want to know where the informant was. I don’t know wasn’t a good enough answer.
The Chadwicks’ home, The Cottage, was a barn conversion with big Velux windows installed in the roof. As Cooper approached, two herons took off from behind the house and flapped ponderously away over the village, their feet trailing clumsily below their bodies. You didn’t often see two herons together. He felt sure there must be a pond behind the house, nicely stocked with fish.
He passed a Nissan Qashqai and a Mercedes Kompressor standing close together in front of a double garage. A small boat trailer was parked on the drive. He looked for the burglar alarm, and found a yellow box high on the front wall. There was also a security light at the bottom of the drive.
The Chadwicks were outside, enjoying the sun, seated on garden chairs under a parasol. Mr Chadwick rose to greet him. He was a tall man with anxious eyes and a balding head shiny with perspiration.
‘Bill Chadwick. This is my wife, Retty. Marietta, that is. We call her Retty.’
Cooper showed his warrant card, even though they hadn’t asked to see it. It was odd how some people were so trusting when he said he was a police officer. No matter what was going on around them, they still felt no reason to be suspicious of strangers.
‘You’ll have heard…?’ he began.
‘At Valley View, yes. The Barrons.’
‘It’s so close,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘Ever so close. Just across the lane.’
They all looked instinctively towards Valley View, though it wasn’t even possible to see Curbar Lane from here, let alone anything of the Barrons’ property. Trees and the corner of a wall, then more trees. And beyond the trees, Riddings Edge. So close? Cooper wondered if the Chadwicks knew what it was actually like to have neighbours living practically on top of you, packed in cheek by jowl, so close that you could hear them clearly through the walls on either side of you. There were lots of people in Edendale who knew what that was like. His own ground-floor flat in Welbeck Street sometimes echoed to the slam of a door from the tenant upstairs, the clatter of feet on the stairs, the blare of old Mrs Shelley’s TV set next door.
‘Obviously you’re some of the Barrons’ closest neighbours,’ he said.
‘And you wondered if we might have noticed anything,’ said Chadwick. ‘Obviously. But I’m afraid we didn’t.’
‘But you were at home last night?’
‘Actually, we went out as soon as it got dark,’ said Chadwick.
‘Where to?’
‘Up on to the edge.’
‘Really?’
Cooper couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He’d been warned only a few minutes earlier about the people who went up on the edge at night. But he hadn’t thought the Chadwicks were the sort of people Mrs Holland was referring to. From her tone of voice, he’d been picturing a dogging site, where people had sex in public while others watched. The growing number of such sites was a regular cause of complaints from residents in secluded parts of Derbyshire. But they didn’t attract people like the Chadwicks, surely?
‘Yes, we were out for a couple of hours,’ said Chadwick.
‘In the dark? Why?’
‘Well, it has to be at night-time. It needs to be dark, to watch properly. You can’t see anything in daylight, of course.’
‘Ah,’ said Cooper, still hoping that he was wrong.
Chadwick nodded. ‘Yes, we were watching the Perseid meteor shower.’
‘Of course you were.’
‘It was one of the best nights for viewing. A nice clear sky – but not much moon. We saw lots of shooting stars. A wonderful experience to watch them from a place like that.’
‘While you were up there, you didn’t notice anything at all?’ asked Cooper.
‘Well, we gathered there was some trouble. Lots of sirens and flashing lights disturbing the peace during the night. We don’t get that here very often. I see it in Sheffield, yes. But not in Riddings.’
‘Oh, you work in Sheffield, sir?’
Chadwick shuffled his feet and blinked nervously. A trickle of sweat ran across his temple. ‘Yes. Er… in a way.’
Immediately Cooper began to study him more keenly. It was unusual to see someone thrown into confusion by such a simple question. You either worked in Sheffield or you didn’t. Unless your job involved travelling around the country, and you were only in Sheffield sometimes. But in that case, why not just say so? What was the cause of the embarrassment?
‘I’m a head teacher,’ said Chadwick. ‘ Was a head teacher.’
‘So you’re retired?’
‘I’m on gardening leave.’
Cooper glanced instinctively at the manicured lawn and neat flower beds around them, before he recognised the euphemism.
‘What happened?’
Chadwick shrugged. ‘I lost it. Simply as that, really. It all just became too much one day. Oh, it had been building up for a while. Quite a few years, actually, when I look back. There was a time in my career when I used to get up in the morning and think Great, I’m going to work today. It was exciting. I relished the challenge. I thought only about what I could achieve each day. But gradually it all changed. I began to wake up in the early hours and feel sick. Sick to my stomach at the thought of having to face school. And it wasn’t just the kids, either. God knows, they were bad enough. But there were all the whingeing staff, the stupid parents, the endless, endless hassle, everyone expecting me to do something to solve their problem, to make their life easier, to produce some magic solution out of a hat to make their child more intelligent, better behaved, more talented at music or football, or less of a bully. It was always my fault when things didn’t happen the way they wanted. And… oh God, I don’t really want to think about it. It makes my guts churn even now.’
‘So you were suspended.’
‘Not exactly. It was… a mutual arrangement. A spell away from the job, while things are sorted out. Or that’s what they said. Maybe it’s just to allow the governors time to find a new head to replace me. My deputy will be happy enough with that, I dare say. Or they could be hoping I’ll give up the fight and resign. It would save them money.’
‘I see.’
Chadwick screwed up his eyes and gazed into the distance, staring at something that Cooper couldn’t see.
‘Or maybe…’
‘What?’
‘Well, I wonder sometimes. Perhaps everyone is just waiting for me to do the decent thing, and top myself.’
Too surprised to know how to respond, Cooper watched Chadwick turn away and walk slowly into the house, as if seeking the shade. He moved like a wounded animal, creeping away to find somewhere quiet and dark.
Cooper looked at Mrs Chadwick. She smiled sadly.
‘I’m sorry. He’s been like that for a while. It doesn’t seem to get any better.’
‘Do you have any family living here?’
‘We have a daughter, Bryony. She’s seventeen, nearly eighteen.’
‘Where would she have been last night?’
‘Oh, she was out.’
Mrs Chadwick became more relaxed now that she had been steered on to a different subject.
‘Bryony got her A level results last week,’ she said. ‘So she was out celebrating with her friends from school. She’ll be off to uni in September.’
‘Good grades? All A stars?’
‘How did you know?’
‘Sometimes I think I’m the only person who never got any,’ said Cooper.
The woman was becoming more animated as she spoke of her daughter. This was a far more comfortable topic, something to be seized on gratefully when life was going wrong.
‘We wanted her to do a gap year,’ she said. ‘The way we both did ourselves when we were students. It was a terrific experience for us. And, of course, it helped us to work through in our minds what we really wanted to do with our lives. I don’t think you can do that without seeing a bit of the world, do you?’