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  Dancing with the Virgins

  ( Ben Cooper and Diane Fry - 2 )

  Stephen Booth

  Dancing With The Virgins by Stephen Booth

  In a remote part of the Peak District stand the Nine Virgins, a ring of stones overshadowed by a dark legend. Now, as winter closes in, a tenth figure is added to the circle - the body of Jenny Weston is discovered, her limbs arranged so she appears to be dancing. This might only be the beginning.

  Stephen Booth was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley, and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He is well known as a breeder of Toggenburg goats and includes among his other interests folklore, the Internet - and walking in the hills of the Peak District, in which his crime novels are set. He lives with his wife Lesley in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire. Dancing with the Virgins is the sequel to his stunning debut, Black Dog, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award for fiction. Praise for Dancing with the Virgins

  ‘The plotting is strong and confident … on this form, Booth could soon be up there with the likes of Reginald Hill. If you read only one new crime writer this year, he’s your man’ JANICE YOUNG, Yorkshire Post Praise for Black Dog

  ‘An exceedingly good first novel: wholly engrossing, it has well-drawn characters and a real sense of place … one looks forward to his next book’ T. J. BINYON, Evening Standard ‘In this atmospheric debut, Stephen Booth makes high summer in Derbyshire as dark and terrifying as midwinter’ VAL MCDERMID

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR Black Dog STEPHEN BOOTH DANCING WITH THE VIRGINS

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  The HarperCollins website address is: www.fireandwater.com

  This Paperback edition 2002

  57986

  First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime 2001

  Copyright Š Stephen Booth 2001

  Stephen Booth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 00 651433 2

  Typeset in Palatino by

  Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  I am grateful to Derbyshire Constabulary and the Peak Park Ranger Service for their willing help in the writing of this book. However, the characters portrayed in its pages are entirely imaginary, and their activities bear no relation to those of any members of the real organizations. I know that many Derbyshire police officers and rangers are heroes in their own way.

  So many people have made contributions to the story that this is a real team effort. But in particular I owe thanks to my agent, Teresa Chris, without whom none of it would have happened.

  and are still actively used as places of worship. Please treat

  them with respect.

  Lines from ‘This is the Sea’ by The Waterboys Ancient sites in Derbyshire like the Nine Virgins stone

  reproduced by permission of Mike Scott and circle are constantly under threat from vandalism,

  Edel Music. I quarrying, erosion and abuse. They are also sacred sites,

  On the day the first woman died, Mark Roper had radio trouble. At the start of his shift, he had been patrolling in the valley, in the deep dead spot where the gritstone plateau blocked out the signal from the telephone interface point at Bradwell. The silence had been unnerving, even then. It had made him conscious of his isolation in the slowly dying landscape, and it had begun to undermine his confidence and stir up the old uncertainties. But Mark wasn’t frightened then. It was only later he had been frightened.

  Normally, this was his favourite time of year - these few weeks of hesitation before the start of winter. He liked to watch the hills changing colour day by day, and the Peak District villages emptying of visitors. But he could tell that today wasn’t quite normal. There was a feeling about this particular Sunday that made him uncomfortable to be alone on Ringham Moor. There was something strained and uneasy in the way the trees stirred in the wind, in the way the dry bracken snapped underfoot and the birds fell silent in the middle of the afternoon.

  As Mark climbed out of the dead spot, his horizon

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  widened until he could see across to Hartington and the Staffordshire border. But even on his way back across the moor towards Partridge Cross, he could not raise his Area Ranger. Maybe the radio handset he had picked up from the briefing centre that morning was the one with the faulty battery connection. Little things like that could change your life forever. ‘Peakland Partridge Three to Peakland Zulu. Owen?’ No matter how many times he tried, his call sign went unanswered. Earlier in the year, they had been burning the heather on this part of Ringham Moor. An acrid charcoal smell still clung to the vegetation, and it mingled with the sweet, fruity scent of the living flowers as it rose from the ground under Mark’s boots. In places, the stems had been left bare and white where the bark had been burned off completely. They showed up in the blackened carpet like tiny bones, like a thousand skeletal fingers poking from the earth. Mark’s father had helped the gamekeepers many times with the swaling, the annual burning of the heather to encourage the growth of fresh shoots for red grouse to feed on. Conditions for burning had to be just right - the heather dry, but the ground wet enough to prevent the fire spreading down into the peat. You could get so hot controlling the flames that you thought your skin would be burned to a cinder, and if you were standing in the wrong place when the wind blew, you could end up black from head to toe. Sometimes, Mark recalled, his father had smelled like Bonfire Night for days.

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  The scent of the burned heather brought the presence of his father back to him now. It was a sensation so powerful that the tall figure might have been striding alongside him, swinging his huge, reddened hands, talking of working dogs and trout flies, and promising that he would take Mark and his brother on a shoot one day. But he had never carried out his promise. And he hadn’t walked with Mark again, not for a long time now.

  The impression left as quickly as it had come, leaving Mark clutching desperately at a memory, reaching for an image that dissipated like a wisp of smoke in the wind.

  Fumbling at the radio, he tried again. ‘Peakland Zulu. Can you hear me, Owen? Owen?’ But still there was nothing.

  As he climbed to the plateau, the weight of Mark’s rucksack gradually increased, chafing his skin through the fabric of his red fleece, pulling down his shoulders and pressing on the muscles in his back. Despite the chill, his neck was wet with sweat, and he shivered as he came over a rise and the wind grabbed at him. The shadows of clouds were moving across the landscape below him. Brief patches of sunlight revealed a field dotted with sheep, a narrow stretch of tarmac road, an oak spinney, or the roof of a distant farmhouse. Yet the sight of human habitation only heightened his sense of being alone.

  It was the environment, not the welfare of people and property, that had led Mark to volunteer as a Peak Park Ranger in the first place. Once, he had wanted to
save

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  the entire world, but in the end he had settled for helping to protect one little bit of it. He had not imagined that he would be called on to tolerate the actions of people who destroyed and defiled the environment, people who had no respect for nature and the lives of animals. It was the most difficult thing he had to learn. Maybe even Owen Fox would never be able to teach him that.

  One thing Owen had taught Mark was the importance of good communication; he had told him to stay in touch, always. But this early November day had been the wrong time for Mark to choose for his first solo patrol. Entirely the wrong day to be on his own.

  This is Peakland Partridge Three. Owen? Owen? Where are you?’

  And, of course, it had been the wrong day for Jenny Weston, too.

  Jenny had been riding a yellow six-gear Dawes Kokomo. It had one-inch tyres, and a wire basket bolted over the rear wheel. It was hired from the Peak Cycle centre at Partridge Cross on a three-hour ticket, and Jenny had already ridden nearly five miles to reach the plateau of Ringham Moor.

  The moor was littered with prehistoric burial mounds, cairns and stone circles, some so small or so ruined and overgrown that they were barely visible in the heather and bracken. It was not as well used as the moors to the south and west, Stanton and Harthill, but its tracks were more accessible to a mountain bike, its open spaces more solitary, its face that bit closer to the sky.

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  Ringham had become one of Jenny’s favourite places. There were many reasons that brought her back, needs and compulsions that had worn a track for her bike tyres right to the base of the Hammond Tower on Ringham Edge. She carried an impression in her mind of the view down into the valley from the tower - that steep plummet through the trees on to a litter of rocks at the bottom.

  It had been a blustery day, with showers that blew across the hills in squalls, bludgeoning the birches and scattering dead leaves into the heather. There seemed to be little life on the moor. But at the bottom of the track, Jenny had passed a youth wearing a red woollen cap pulled low on his forehead, with large ears that stuck out like table-tennis bats. He had been walking very quickly towards the road, and had refused to raise his head to meet her eye as she passed. Jenny had pressed down harder on the pedals, seeking to gain distance from the youth, so that she over-exerted herself on the slope and had to stop further on, gasping from painful lungs as she looked back. The youth had gone, and there was no one else to be seen - only a fistful of jackdaws drifting against the face of one of the abandoned quarries, and a herd of cattle lying restlessly in a field on the slope below the Virgins.

  Jenny had always believed she was safer on a bike. Two wheels and the extra speed gave her the confidence that she could get out of trouble, if she needed to. A woman on her own, in a place like Ringham Moor, ought to think about being careful.

  To get to the top of the moor, Jenny had to dismount

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  ath and wheel the Koko up there when she thechePd the She knew she was almost with iron hand twisted Heart Stone, twelve feet high, and foot holds driven into its sides. At the top, the sandy track was cycleable, as long as you avoided the exposed rocks in the middle. It patches a plateau of dark heather and whinberry, with of rhododendron on the southern slopes. eed ewere

  old quarries on two sides, the plateau fell away into on the east and south,

  the valleys. paths was marked by a of th~a an The crossing of the main wooden sign scrawled with the name

  Virgins and a yellow arrow. Around the sin a area worn by many feet. Someone living in valley the had a peacock; its long drawnout shriek drifted across

  the moor before dying away in the wind. By the time she reached the Virgins, jenny could feel the perspiration standing out on her forehead. Her Lycra cycling shorts were tighter on her hips and but-skin of her e been and the tocks than they should blotched from, the exertion and the legs was pink and chafing of the wind. ‘t mind the wind, or the cold, or even the She didn’t exertion. Up here on the moor they to blow away the thoughts that would sit in the corners of her mind all the rest of the week, dark and evil-eyed. Nowhere re in Sheffield,

  else could she do wthe crowded streets and the traffic only fed her where anxieties. In early November, the weather kept most people off

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  the moor. But she could see that someone was sitting against the trunk of a tree near the stone circle, playing a few notes on a flute, toying with a tune that was vaguely familiar. She couldn’t see the musician clearly, but she had an impression of long, fair hair and a multicoloured sweater. Jenny turned the handlebars of the bike away from the Nine Virgins and headed towards a path that ran down through deep bracken. The path turned into a stream bed later in the winter, and the ground was scoured to its sandy bottom. Tree roots ran close to the surface, bursting through to form ragged steps in the steepest parts. Beechnuts crunched underfoot and the bracken was head high. It pressed close around her, its brown, dead hands brushing against her legs and rattling on the spokes of her wheels. Beyond the dip, the Hammond Tower stood at the top of the slope. It was prominent on the horizon, tall and built of grey stone, but serving no apparent purpose. A walled-up doorway faced a flight of roughly cut steps and a steep drop off Ringham Edge. Fallen leaves filled a wide hollow between the tower and the rock outcrops they called the Cat Stones. Jenny sat for a while on a broken ledge at the base of the tower, staring at the view across the dale, waiting for her breathing to slow down, but feeling the chill begin to creep over her skin. She shouldn’t stay long, or her muscles would stiffen. Down in the valley, she could see the farm, with a field full of cows, a cluster of gritstone buildings and a bigger, newer shed with a dark green steel roof. A track

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  he studied it carefully for figures ran past the farm, and s towards the tower. walking by the gate and heading up But there was no one today. As she stood up to retrieve her bike, she noticed a the stones of the tower which had a een crevice in led drinks cans and c1g crammed with cramp shook her head oh for the’ Rang packets. Jenny es who hg about the litter. it was a j

  patrolled the moor. reached the stone circle A few minutes later, s were only about four feet high, again. The Nine Virgins of flattened and eroded and they stood in a clearing Yards grass between clumps of birch and oaks. Fifteen anoutlier le stone on its own, from the circle was a sing - the stone that they called the e Fiddler’ g been dcag to the legend, nine bath been turned to stone dancing on the Sabbath and had ed for them had suf. for their sinThe fiddler whop le stone looked lonely fered the same fate. Noe m se er to stand outside the and isolated, condemn

  circle. Jenny stopped the bike and wiped her palms over the tissue. The hills were already misting into grey but the clouds broke and allowed a banks of bracken, was no sound but trickle of sun on to the moor. There ere was for the wind wh ispenng across the heather. it was no one to be seen now; she was alone. And perfectly safe on a bike - as long as you didn t get a puncture. ‘Oh, damn! led to turn her bike upside She dismounted and struggled

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  down to inspect the back tyre. Immediately she saw the glitter of a sliver of glass. It had slit a gaping wound in the rubber tread and gone straight through to puncture the inner tube. She pulled the glass free, flinching at the sharp edges, and listened to the last gasp of escaping air. The tyre looked peculiarly lifeless as it hung from the wheel, the soft grey skin of its collapsed tube protruding under the rim. Jenny knew what a hassle it was to get the tyre off the back wheel, repair and replace it, and she was already reaching that state of tiredness where everything felt like a major task. But there was nothing else for it. Sighing, she flipped the quick-release lever and dropped the wheel on the ground. The forks of the bike pointed into the air in an undignified posture, like a dead animal on its back. She was reminded of a photograph that had been taken at the height of the panic over mad cow disease. It had shown a slaughtered British Holstein cow, a huge animal with its stomach bloated, its vast udder shiny and leak
ing a dribble of milk, and its four stiff legs pointing ludicrously to the sky. The cow had been waiting its turn to be rolled into an incinerator. Its photograph had been on the front of leaflets that Jenny had helped to distribute, and she had seen it so many times that the details had stayed with her ever since, along with other images of things that had been done to animals. Automatically, she patted the pouch she wore round her waist, to make sure it was still there. Soon, she would have to decide what to do with what it contained.

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  Jenny shivered e cold. The feathery stems e’ ocotton and the evening would b grass created patches of golden mist close to the ground. They hovered just above the heather, moving in the wind like live creatures stirring in their nests.ears that It was the noise of the wind in jenny’s covered the soft sound of footsteps until the walker was only a few feet behind her.

  In half an hour, Mark was due to go off duty. Owen had given him exact instructions for his first solo patrol - a pass across the face of Ringham and a descent into the valley on the far side, where the moor turned into farmland. There he s for recent damage, and have la scout stiles and signpost around for the worst of the litter left by hikers. On the way back, he should have a glance at the Nine Virgins to see that the ancient monument more scarred than usual; have a word, to have vitched their tents in campers foolhardy k c uldn hmagme why anybody would the woods. Mar want to camp on they were But still t did it. of alone in November. breaking the law when they did. Near the top of the-track he noticed a crumpled Coke Mutteri can, dropped by some careless visitorangrily, angrily, he picked it up and slipped it under the flap chocolate of his rucksack, where it joined a small pile el of empty bar wrappers, aluminium ring-pulls an

  Marlboro packet Mark mond Tower, to be disposed of later-near the Hamm