Dancing With the Virgins Read online

  ‘Where’s Acting DS Fry?’ asked Tailby. ‘Wasn’t she here earlier?’

  ‘She has one of her sessions with Maggie Crew,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The DCI drew the words out like a sigh. He didn’t sound hopeful of Maggie Crew.

  Tailby stood quietly for a minute, staring at the van and the two youths. ‘I’ve got a press conference to do in half an hour,’ he said. ‘What am I going to tell the TV and the newspapers?’

  ‘How about telling them to keep out of our bloody way?’ suggested Hitchens.

  ‘All right,’ said Tailby. ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.’

  The group of women had moved on. They could be heard chatting again for a while. But they fell very silent when they reached the rock that contained the phallus farm.

  At the West Street HQ, they had already been making structural alterations to the canteen. They had succeeded in making it both smaller and less welcoming at the same time. Perhaps it was a deliberate ploy to make the introduction of the vending machines seem like an improvement.

  But E Division was lucky. Their neighbours in B Division had no canteen at all. A mobile sandwich service called at the front of the building every lunchtime. Beyond that, it was a question of a kettle, a jar of Nescafé and a packet of chocolate biscuits in the corner of every office. There could be no ‘canteen culture’ when there was no canteen. Problem solved.

  Ben Cooper carried a cup of coffee to a table where some of his shift were already sitting, and he arrived in the middle of a conversation that immediately made him uneasy.

  ‘She’s a real hard bitch,’ Todd Weenink was saying.

  Opposite Weenink was Toni Gardner, a DC from another shift, who still had her straight blonde hair tied back into a ponytail in the fashion of the uniformed officers. She nodded in agreement. ‘She’s a toughie, all right.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Cooper, though he felt he could have a good guess.

  ‘That Diane Fry,’ said Weenink.

  ‘A snotty cow, she is, too,’ said Gardner.

  Cooper settled down on a spare chair, concentrating on not spilling his coffee so that he didn’t have to meet anyone’s eye.

  ‘She’s just trying too hard,’ he said. ‘She’ll settle down after a bit.’

  Weenink shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t know how you can be so tolerant. I know I wouldn’t be, if it was me.’

  Cooper looked at the officers round the table, and he wanted to tell them about the time that Diane Fry had reluctantly confided in him the secrets of her past, the dreadful history of her family, and the heroin-addict sister she hadn’t seen since she was sixteen. But he knew it was impossible to share this knowledge with anyone else.

  ‘I’d tell her where to stick her stripes,’ said Gardner. She smiled at Todd Weenink, as if willing him to notice that she was agreeing with him. Cooper realized that there was more going on here. Todd had an attraction for some women that he never fully understood. He supposed it was a kind of overt masculinity, the sense of sexual challenge in his dark smirk and the way he held his body. Yet these things were not what women said they looked for in men. Not the women Ben Cooper talked to, anyway.

  Gradually, the conversation veered to other topics – grumbles about supervisors, night shifts and salaries. Every man there could have run E Division better than the Divisional Commander. Under their guidance, the clear-up rate would double. But then there were the courts to deal with, of course. Not to mention the CPS. The Criminal Preservation Society, they called it – the body of lawyers given the responsibility of prosecuting the alleged offenders the police produced for them. There was a general shaking of heads.

  ‘And we’re chasing up white vans tomorrow,’ said Weenink. ‘I can’t wait.’

  Finally, the other officers drifted away and left Cooper and Weenink alone.

  ‘Are you all right, Todd?’

  ‘Sure. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered what all that was about earlier on today. What did you get called back for?’

  ‘Oh, just the usual sort of bollocks,’ said Weenink dismissively. ‘Somebody upstairs with their knickers in a twist.’

  On the television screen in the corner of the room, DCI Tailby’s face appeared. It was a clip from the coverage of the press conference. Tailby was trying to look serious and professional, but hopeful.

  ‘Todd,’ said Cooper, ‘what do you know about Maggie Crew? The victim that Diane Fry is dealing with.’

  ‘I know she can’t remember much about the attack, that’s all. But I can’t say I’d want to remember much myself, really. It’s tough on a woman, getting her face messed up like that.’

  ‘Do you know if she’s ever been married or anything?’

  ‘No. She’s a solicitor, all business suits and fancy briefs. Likes to be called “Ms”, I expect.’

  ‘Has she got children?’

  ‘Kids? You’re joking. I bet her womb has cobwebs.’

  Cooper ran his mind back over the earlier conversation. He felt dissatisfied with the way it had ended.

  ‘Look, you have to realize she’s a bit of an outsider,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Diane Fry. Being an outsider can be a difficult thing to deal with. It takes time.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me about that,’ said Weenink. ‘I’m an outsider, too. And I always will be. Neither one thing nor the other, that’s me.’

  ‘You mean because you’re Dutch?’

  ‘Half-Dutch. My dad’s from Rotterdam. He came over to work in the British shipyards back in the seventies. He ended up in Sheffield.’

  ‘What shipyards?’

  ‘Exactly. There are none left. That’s why he ended up in Sheffield. He worked in a steel mill, until that closed too.’

  ‘I bet you got the piss taken out of your name when you were a kid.’

  Weenink scowled. ‘Are you kidding? I cursed my dad as a bastard every day, just because he gave me that name. It’s pronounced like “Vaining” but with a “k” on the end, I’d say. I’d tell them and tell them till I was blue in the face, but do you think they took any notice?’

  ‘It was a joke,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Taking the piss. Like “wee”, you know.’

  Weenink flushed. ‘It’s pronounced like “Vaining” …’

  ‘… but with a “k” on the end. Right.’

  Cooper began to look around the canteen for an excuse to leave.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Weenink slowly, ‘when I got bigger than the rest of them, they stopped doing it.’ His face solidified into his notorious stare. ‘Once I’d smashed the first one’s teeth in, anyway.’

  ‘Sorry, time’s up for the public. Next item on the agenda – minutes of the last meeting.’

  The chairman of Cargreave Parish Council wore a white cardigan and a tweed skirt, and she was so short-sighted that she barely seemed able to recognize her colleagues at the far end of the table. Councillor Mary Salt preferred to be known as ‘chair’, but some members of the council refused to be forced into ways that sounded a bit modern. They still called her ‘chairman’, ignoring her angry, myopic glare.

  Owen Fox didn’t belong to Councillor Salt’s party. He was an Independent, so his voice carried no weight in the important decisions, like where to spend the parish’s share of the Council Tax. But he and the chairman had known each other for many years.

  The parish room was cold and echoey, with a creaky wooden floor and a small stage at one end that had been turned into a Chinese laundry for rehearsals of the village pantomime. From where he sat, Owen could see Councillor Salt’s legs tucked under the table in her flesh-coloured tights. Her legs looked tight and shiny, like sausage skins. His fingers itched for a fork to prick them.

  The council meeting started with fifteen minutes of public questions. Usually, there were only one or two familiar faces sitting at the back of the room, sometimes no one at all. But tonight the room was
full, and more chairs had been brought in. These people wanted to ask what action was being taken to make the area safe. They wanted a senior police officer to be brought to the next meeting to answer questions, and the clerk was instructed to write to the Chief Constable. Then the chairman moved the agenda on. The public were allowed only fifteen minutes.

  The real business of the meeting involved correspondence from the National Park Authority about a visitor questionnaire and a landscape enhancement grant scheme. The county council had replied to a letter about street lamps, and there was another discussion about installing a height barrier at the entrance to the village car park to stop gypsies getting their caravans on. The success of the Millennium tree-planting scheme was reported, and next year’s well-dressing considered. Mobile library visits were changing to alternate Thursdays. The bowls club were having a quiz night. Soon, the dangers of walking on Ringham Moor were long forgotten. The public got only fifteen minutes, after all.

  ‘Any other business?’ asked the chairman finally.

  Councillor Salt looked round the table. Nobody responded, and Owen checked his watch. Not a bad time. Some of the other councillors would head for the Dancing Badger for a ritual exchange of gossip, but for Owen it would be a chance to get back to the house. Socializing in the village had never held any attractions for Owen; even less so now.

  ‘Meeting closed, then.’

  Owen made a dash for the door, trying to get out into the street before any members of the public could corner him and ask about the attacks on Ringham Moor. He didn’t have the answers they wanted, no more than anyone else did. Nobody knew who it was stalking the moor. And nobody knew when he would strike again.

  But Owen had his own thoughts. It only needed someone to ask him the right question, and he would no longer be able to keep them to himself.

  13

  The lamp on the desk was tilted at an angle that directed light into Diane Fry’s eyes and made Maggie Crew’s face more difficult to see in the shadows between the lamp and the window. There was little light left in the sky over Matlock as the evening drew in, and Fry felt a creeping sense of unease in the apartment. If she had been in Maggie’s position herself, she would have felt no reassurance from the panic buttons and the extra vigilance the police had promised.

  ‘You understand that I need to talk to you, Maggie,’ she said.

  ‘You can talk as much as you like. I’ve got plenty of time.’

  Fry’s reading of Maggie’s file and her discussion with DI Armstrong had convinced her that she had to be persistent if she was to get anything out of this woman. Deep inside, Maggie Crew had valuable memories locked in – memories the police needed, memories that would help them to identify a man who had now become a killer.

  ‘I want to talk to you about our new victim,’ she said.

  Maggie waited, playing with the lamp. No sign of interest. Fry tried again.

  ‘The woman found dead on Ringham Moor.’

  Maggie shrugged. Fry felt a spasm of irritation, but controlled it. The file said that Maggie Crew was frustrated and bitter over the failure of the police to find her attacker. She mustn’t let personal reactions get in the way of doing the job.

  ‘I know nothing about your new victim,’ said Maggie. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Let me help you, then. Her name is Jenny Weston. She’s thirty years old. I mean she was, when she died. She won’t ever be any older now.

  ‘Jenny Weston was five foot six and half, and she weighed sixty kilos. That’s nine and a half stone. She had been trying to lose weight recently, but wasn’t very successful. She lived in a modernized terrace house in Totley, on the outskirts of Sheffield, and she worked as a section supervisor at an insurance call centre. She might not seem to have had much in common with you, but maybe you would have got on with her. Jenny liked cycling and classical music, Haydn and Strauss. I see you like Strauss, Maggie.’

  She nodded towards the stereo. A CD of Tales from the Vienna Woods lay on the top, the one case out of place from the neat racks. It was a rare splash of colour in the dark corner.

  The light dipped slightly. Maggie’s outline began to come back into focus as Fry blinked and her eyes readjusted to the darkness.

  ‘Somebody loaned it to me,’ said Maggie. ‘I haven’t listened to it.’

  ‘Jenny bought her clothes at Marks & Spencer and Next, where she had store cards. She banked with the NatWest, but transferred her credit card account to one that supported Greenpeace. She was a big animal lover. She was a member of lots of societies, including the RSPCA, and she helped out as a volunteer for the local Cats Protection League. She had her own cat called Nelson. Do you know why she called him that? Because when she took him in as a stray he had an infection that made him keep one eye closed. Have you ever had a cat, Maggie?’

  Maggie maintained the stare. Fry had no idea whether she was getting through to her.

  ‘We know a lot more about Jenny. We know she borrowed show business biographies and Maeve Binchy novels from her local library. She drove a blue Fiat Cinquecento, but she didn’t wash it very often. On the back seat were her spare shoes, an orange and her mobile phone. When we rang the number, it played “The William Tell Overture”.’

  Maggie’s eyes were expressionless and unblinking, though her hands fidgeted restlessly and her shoulders were tense.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t listen to Rossini, either.’

  Fry had all the details of Jenny’s life at her fingertips. Yet they knew almost nothing about the young woman who had stayed with her in Totley several weeks ago. Ros Daniels had disappeared as mysteriously as she had come, as far as Jenny’s neighbours were concerned. She had been seen walking up The Quadrant one day with a rucksack on her back, and she had knocked at Jenny’s door. Her hair was described as being ‘in tangles’ by an old man who had passed her on his way to the post office and who had noticed her heavy boots and the rings in her nose. He was seventy-five years old and not well up on modern fashions, but he was quite an observant old man. He had given it as his opinion that she hadn’t been wearing a bra, either.

  But it was only from a colleague at the Global Assurance call centre that the police had learned the young woman’s name. The colleague had visited Jenny’s home, and had been introduced. The miracle was that she had remembered Ros’s name at all.

  ‘She was a girl, really. I’d say she was no more than twenty years old. A student type, you know? All dreadlocks and combat trousers she was, and sitting slumped on the floor like she’d not even been taught how to use a chair. Never had a job, you could tell. Never had to work in a call centre selling insurance, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Did she say much?’

  ‘“Hi.” That was what she said. And that was said a bit contemptuous, like. As if she’d weighed me up in a glance and thought I was too boring and respectable and hardly worth bothering with. It was a cheek, I thought. I mean, if I’m boring and respectable, then so was Jenny Weston. So what was she doing at Jenny’s house, this Ros?’

  ‘Did Jenny never explain who she was?’

  ‘Never. I did to try to ask her next day. Discreetly, like. I asked where Ros was from, and Jenny said from Cheshire. But then she changed the subject straight away, almost as if she’d said too much, though she hadn’t told me anything at all. She didn’t want to talk about her, that was plain. Well, she could be a bit stand-offish when she wanted to, could Jenny. I can’t imagine what she had to do with that girl.’

  Fry watched Maggie’s hands moving impatiently. The cat had brought no response. That was no surprise. It was obvious there had never been a pet to disturb the orderly surroundings of Maggie Crew’s apartment.

  ‘Jenny’s next birthday would have been on the 11th of December,’ she said. ‘She was a Sagittarian. She was interested in horoscopes, too. She wore a chain with a silver star-sign symbol – the archer, half horse and half man. She had made an appointment with her dentist for next Tuesday, because she was worried about a
loose filling. Jenny Weston was the sort of person who started buying her Christmas presents early. In fact, she had already bought a cashmere sweater for her mother, and a book on Peak District aircraft wrecks for her father, who used to be in the RAF. She had even bought a toy mouse with a bell on it, for the cat.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘Why are you telling me all this? I don’t want to know any of it.’

  ‘Jenny had taken a week’s holiday from work. It seems she loved the Peak District. But you do, too. Don’t you, Maggie?’

  ‘I used to,’ she said. ‘Something changed my view.’

  ‘Well, Jenny must have loved it right up to her last breath. She never learned that disillusionment. She never had the chance.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She was a member of the National Trust, too. We found lots of photographs she took at National Trust properties. That was another hobby of hers – photography. It seems her favourite place to visit was probably Hammond Hall. You know Hammond Hall well, don’t you, Maggie?’

  ‘It says so in my file, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘You’re a volunteer guide there, aren’t you?’

  ‘I used to be.’

  ‘You might have met Jenny Weston, then. You might have shown her round some time, explained the history of the Tudor wall-hangings to her, or directed her to the ladies’ toilets perhaps.’

  ‘I never really notice the visitors, you know. They’re just an anonymous mass. I forget them all as soon as they’ve gone. Unless they ask particularly interesting questions.’

  ‘Jenny might have done that. She was interested in history.’

  ‘Lots of people are.’

  The volunteers co-ordinator at Hammond Hall had been interviewed after the assault on Maggie Crew. She had described Maggie as very knowledgeable. A bit cool and austere, perhaps, but some visitors preferred her as a guide because of the depth of her knowledge.

  ‘Jenny may even have dealt with your car insurance,’ said Fry, ‘or the insurance on your house.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’