Ben Cooper and Diane Fry 11 - The Devil’s Edge Read online

  The shriek went on and on. In Cooper’s mind it was a despairing wail, the scream of a dying victim. A call for help he was unable to respond to.

  ‘Oh God. Which house is it?’ he said. ‘Can you see?’

  ‘It might be nothing. A false alarm.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  You couldn’t easily pin down the direction of a burglar alarm. It was one of those elusive noises. Its high-pitched shriek bounced off everything – the houses, the trees, the rock faces of the edge. Cooper stared apprehensively down at the village. He was looking for the telltale red flash of the light on an alarm box. He felt an anxious sweat breaking out on his forehead despite the cold wind.

  ‘Can you see it? Carol, can you see where it’s coming from?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor me. Damn.’

  With shaking fingers, he used his phone to alert the control room – though there were units in the immediate area who ought to be responding even as he began to make the call. Thank goodness he was on top of the edge, and within signal range.

  ‘There are people running,’ said Villiers when he finished the call.

  ‘Where?’

  She pointed. ‘Over there, behind the trees.’

  ‘That’s on the other side of Curbar Lane. Yes, it must be The Cottage. It’s the teenagers’ party at the Chadwicks.’

  Voices drifted clear on the air now from the village. Screams, shouts, a smashed glass, bodies crashing through undergrowth. Distantly a siren started – the two-tone wail of a police vehicle. Too distant, though. Why weren’t they in the village already?

  ‘How do we get down?’ said Villiers.

  ‘There’s only the old packhorse route. But for God’s sake be careful.’

  ‘You go first then. I’m right behind you.’

  Their progress down the slope from the edge was frustratingly slow. The stone was uneven and dangerous, worn smooth and slippery in places by centuries of passing feet. Cooper cursed under his breath many times as he stumbled, or felt his feet begin to slide on the rock. He wished he could have gone faster, but there was no point in breaking an ankle or hurtling head first down the slope. An injured police officer was no use to anyone.

  ‘Be careful,’ he called at every corner or steeper section. ‘Carol, be careful.’

  ‘I’m being careful,’ she shouted back. ‘Would we have been better going back to the car?’

  ‘Too late now,’ said Cooper. ‘Too late.’

  Finally the slope grew less steep, the ground levelled out, the track became more grass than rock. They were on the outskirts of the village, covering the rough terrain between the edge and the boundaries of the first properties.

  But now they could see almost nothing – a dark wedge of trees directly in front of them, indistinct shapes further away in the dusk, a brief glimpse of a light from a window, appearing and disappearing among the trees.

  Cooper was breathless now, his lungs burning and his legs tiring. He glanced over his shoulder to see Villiers still close behind him.

  ‘I’m not sure where this track comes out,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, great. I thought you knew where we were going.’

  ‘You know what?’ gasped Cooper. ‘I think I must be mad.’

  ‘No argument from me.’

  Over a stile, they found themselves running through a field, passing a large property to their right.

  ‘This is Moorside House,’ said Cooper. ‘Tyler Kaye.’

  A horse snorted in the dusk, and Villiers skidded sideways in surprise.

  And then they were on Curbar Lane at last, emerging on to tarmac and stumbling to a halt. Cooper stared around, trying to regain his breath, clutching his phone in his hand but not knowing now which way to go. He could still hear the burglar alarm, but the sound was lost in the trees, less shrill and distinct than it had been from the edge. There was music too, loud and pounding, a background to many voices still screaming and shouting.

  ‘How many kids are at that party?’ said Cooper. ‘Has she invited the whole school?’

  ‘Maybe it’s on Facebook,’ said Villiers.

  But at least there was a police vehicle, a marked response car at the end of the lane, with its blue lights flashing.

  ‘We’re responding to a call about an intruder,’ said one of the uniformed officers when he saw Cooper. ‘It’s a high-priority response in this area. They called out the cavalry.’

  ‘Which house?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘The Cottage, Curbar Lane. Name of Chadwick. But we can’t find it.’

  ‘It’s right there. You’ve probably got it as Nether Croft on the database.’

  ‘Okay, I see it.’

  The officer’s radio crackled, and he acknowledged.

  ‘Air support is on scene,’ he said.

  ‘What? They were quick.’

  ‘It’s the South Yorkshire air support unit, Sierra Yankee 99. It was already in the air, and a lot closer than the unit in Ripley.’

  Cooper could hear the helicopter now. If it had been deployed for a suspect search, it would already be using its thermal-imaging camera to sweep the ground along the edge of the village.

  ‘Are you in contact with them?’

  The officer from the response unit had an Airwave radio, while Cooper had only his phone.

  ‘Yes, the observer is in direct communication. He can give us a commentary.’

  The officer joined Cooper and Villiers on the lane. Nearby somebody, or something, had bulldozed a way through the undergrowth, leaving a trail like the charge of a rhinoceros.

  ‘What the heck has been going on here?’ said Cooper.

  The noise of the helicopter overhead drowned out everything else. Cooper felt the downdraught of the blades stirring the bushes along the edge of the lane. Then a powerful light burst from the sky and dazzled him, lighting up the area for yards around.

  ‘Please tell Sierra Yankee there are police officers on the ground – and to get their damn light off us!’

  ‘They’re reporting multiple individuals going through the gardens at The Cottage,’ said the officer.

  ‘Multiple? How many?’

  ‘A dozen, at least.’

  Cooper could still hear music thumping from the house. If the speakers were inside, they must have all the doors and windows open.

  ‘It’s the party. Can’t someone tell those kids to stop running around like maniacs and get back in the house? They’re only confusing the situation. They’re creating far too many heat signatures for the thermal imager.’

  ‘We spoke to them earlier, when we had complaints from their neighbours. They’ve been drinking all evening.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, they’re not taking any advice from us. No doubt they think all this is a great laugh.’

  ‘Idiots.’

  Villiers had pushed her way through the undergrowth and found a gate standing open.

  ‘Whoever they are, I think they went this way.’

  They could see figures milling around now, many of them simply running round in circles. Solar lights had been set up in the Chadwicks’ garden, and teenagers were charging backwards and forwards, in and out of the lights, creating a chaos of shadows. Some were shaking bottles of beer and spraying liquid into the air.

  ‘How are we going to get this situation under control?’ said Villiers.

  ‘Without a lot more bodies on the ground, we’re not.’

  Cooper grabbed a passing youth and held on to him.

  ‘Hey, who are you?’

  ‘Police. What’s going on here?’

  The young man laughed. He was flushed and pouring with sweat, and his shirt was soaked with beer.

  ‘Intruder,’ he said. ‘They chased him off.’

  ‘Which way?’

  He stared wildly around. ‘That way. Some of the guys went after him.’

  Cooper looked at the PC, who was listening to his radio.

  ‘The helicopter crew are tracking the
heat signature of a single figure running from the scene.’

  ‘Okay. Come on.’

  The three of them had only gone a few yards towards the corner of the Chadwicks’ property, close to The Green, when the officer reported again.

  ‘The suspect has disappeared from the thermal imager. Gone to ground somewhere, or got inside a house.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the vicinity of Chapel Close.’

  ‘This way, then.’

  ‘He’s on the move again. The observer on Sierra Yankee 99 is directing us to the second house on the right in Chapel Close.’

  Cooper grimaced. ‘Oh God. That’s the Gambles’ house. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

  He could tell from the noises around him that more officers had arrived in Riddings, and were closing in on the location under the direction of the helicopter’s observer. Torch beams flashed towards him and away again. An Alsatian barked excitedly, and he pictured it straining against its handler’s lead.

  He grabbed Villiers’ arm and pointed.

  ‘There he goes,’ he said. ‘Over the wall and running through that orchard. If we cut across the lane, we can catch him at the other side.’

  ‘I’m ahead of you.’

  Villiers sprinted off, and was there first. She caught up with her quarry, grabbed an arm, kicked out a leg and flipped him on to the floor. Coming up behind, Cooper heard the breath go out of his body in a long whoosh.

  By the time he arrived, Villiers already had handcuffs on and had patted the suspect down. She sat him up and Cooper gazed down at him, trembling with anger.

  ‘Mr Gamble. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Gamble had lost his hat, and his hair was standing out from his head in a wild tangle. For several moments he could do nothing but gasp and wheeze. He stared around him in shock, as if he’d suddenly found himself in the middle of some surreal fantasy. His bushy eyebrows waggled in alarm, and he looked down at the cuffs on his wrists.

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ he said plaintively.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That isn’t true.’ Cooper gestured at the activity – the running officers, the flashing lights, the swinging torch beams, and the helicopter hovering overhead. ‘You were the cause of all this.’

  Gamble gazed up at him. His voice was feeble and wretched.

  ‘I was just watching.’

  Straightening up, Cooper took a deep breath to calm himself down.

  ‘You know what? You do too much watching, sir. Far too much. You should spend more time at home, with your wife.’

  They handed Gamble off to a pair of uniformed officers, who escorted him to his house. Other officers were trying to calm the teenagers and shepherd them back to the party. It was unclear what offence Gamble might have committed yet, until they could get a coherent account from someone, a few details about what had happened. Judging from the state of some of the participants, that might not be until morning.

  Cooper looked at Villiers. ‘Thanks, Carol.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ She brushed her hands together. ‘But what’s this spend more time at home with your wife? Are you turning into a marriage guidance counsellor now?’

  Cooper shook his head.

  ‘This village is turning me into something, though. And I’m not sure I like it.’

  He turned away from Chapel Close and looked across the gardens of The Cottage. Finally, he could tell the direction the burglar alarm was coming from. The sound was much clearer now, screaming high-pitched and urgent across the village, calling endlessly for attention while all these people ran madly around in circles.

  He could see it, too – a small red light blinking and blinking high on the corner of a wall, no more than fifty yards from Valley View.

  He knew now that the alarm wasn’t at the Chadwicks’, where the party had been taking place. It was sounding at Fourways, the home of the Hollands.

  It was already dark when Diane Fry drove into Edendale and turned into Grosvenor Avenue. She found a space at the kerb and parked outside the house.

  When she pulled out her key to enter her flat, she noticed that she had streaks of blood on her hands. Strange that she hadn’t see it while she was driving back from Nottinghamshire. Her mind must have been on other things.

  She closed the door, shrugged off her jacket and headed for the shower. Blood on her hands. That was something not everyone could cope with. But right now, for her, it felt good. The sight of blood was exactly what she needed.

  14

  Friday

  By the following morning, a scene-of-crime team had moved into the Hollands’ house. SOCOs were checking any items with a smooth surface. Doors, worktops, kitchen utensils, anything the offenders might have touched. If they had, there was a possibility of the items being fingerprinted.

  Cooper had managed only a few hours’ sleep before he found himself back in Riddings. Last night already seemed like a strange dream. By the time he returned, much of the circus had been and gone, leaving a team conducting the forensic search and an examination of the garden in daylight.

  DI Hitchens was there, marshalling resources, snapping at people on the phone, urging the press office to restrict the amount of information released to the media. If they weren’t careful, there would soon be a danger of panic,.

  ‘It appears there was an earlier 999 call,’ said Hitchens when he saw Cooper arrive. ‘The call handler told the householder to follow the usual procedure for a burglary report.’

  ‘Don’t touch anything that the offenders might have touched.’

  ‘Right.’

  Cooper nodded. The instinct of most householders was to tidy up. Clear away the broken glass, close the drawers, mend the damaged door hinges. And wipe away those fingerprints from the windowsill, of course. In retrospect, they realised their mistake. But by then it was often too late.

  ‘It wasn’t given a high enough priority, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Sarah Holland wouldn’t have been thinking logically anyway. Not once her husband had been taken away in the ambulance, with a paramedic frantically working on him all the way to the hospital.

  ‘People are getting very jumpy, Ben,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘At times like this, people start to see crime all around them. And the press – I think they’ve gone mad. They’re just reporting stuff off the internet as if it was fact. Blogs and so on. Some of the rubbish going round takes the breath away.’

  Hitchens turned away to take a phone call. When he finished, his face was grim.

  ‘Any news?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘Martin Holland has died in hospital.’

  ‘Damn. What was the cause of death?’

  ‘There were no visible injuries. It seems likely he had a heart attack. The post-mortem will tell us for sure.’

  Cooper remembered Mrs Holland talking about her husband walking on the edge for exercise. Good for the heart, isn’t it? He ought to have realised that Martin Holland had a heart condition. He was the right age, and came from a fairly sedentary profession. A classic case. A cardiac arrest just waiting to happen.

  ‘Did Mrs Holland see anything?’

  ‘A masked figure. She hasn’t been able to give us any further description. She’s too upset.’

  This was the woman who liked the idea of having a criminal as a neighbour. A Mafia lover, Gavin Murfin might have called her. Maybe she’d watched The Sopranos too often on Channel 4. It was a middle-class attitude towards crime. He bet she’d never experienced serious crime herself in her life. Not until now.

  ‘Mr Holland confronted the intruder, then.’

  ‘That’s the way it seems. But there was no actual physical contact, so far as we can tell.’

  ‘That’s very different from the attacks on the Barrons, sir.’

  ‘Probably they were just disturbed sooner. They got scared off and legged it.’

  ‘The Savages aren’t th
e type to be scared off,’ said Cooper.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s all down to the Savages,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make sense for them to come back to the same area so soon. It doesn’t fit in with their pattern.’

  ‘So what, then?’

  ‘I think someone has been exploiting the panic over the Savages. I think the answer lies much closer. Here, in Riddings.’

  Hitchens looked at him. ‘Prove it, Ben.’

  ‘If only I could …’

  The DI nodded. ‘Everything comes down to “if only”. By the way, Murf is here somewhere. Make sure he’s not causing a nuisance, will you?’

  Hitchens walked away to talk to the crime-scene manager, and Cooper cautiously entered the house. The slate floor in the hallway was scattered with plastic wrappers, the detritus of the paramedics’ attempts to stabilise Martin Holland before his trip in the ambulance.

  The spotlights were on in the kitchen, illuminating the Shaker-style units with a harsh, cold light. The cat’s basket by the Aga was empty. Cooper wondered where the Persian was. Probably taken offence at all the strangers in the house, and gone to hide in the garden.

  Normally a neighbour would step in to look after any animals in a case like this. He wasn’t sure there was a neighbour in Riddings who would think of it. Next door, Valley View was empty, while Russell Edson and Richard Nowak seemed unlikely sources of support.

  ‘Cute,’ called Murfin from a doorway.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This downstairs bathroom.’

  Cooper looked in, and saw a cast-iron rolltop bath with clawed feet, his and hers hand basins.

  ‘And look at this,’ said Murfin from the hallway a minute later.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Mail. They get mail. Proper letters in envelopes, with their name and address typed on them. Most people only get advertising leaflets through their letterbox these days. That’s what’s been keeping the Royal Mail in business since the internet was invented.’

  ‘Are you doing anything useful, Gavin?’

  ‘Yes, keeping everyone’s spirits up.’

  Cooper watched the SOCOs dusting the door handles and laying down stepping plates in the hall.