Dancing with the Virgins bcadf-2 Page 2

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  couldn’t tolerate the attitude that made people think it was OK to scatter the environment with litter. They thought their own convenience was more important. If he had his way, Mark would ban these people completely from the national park. He would put tollgates on all the entrance roads and issue passes for admission. It might come to it one day, too. The park couldn’t cope with the constantly rising numbers. There were tyre tracks in the sandy soil here. That meant there had been a mountain biker this way recently. Mark knew his by-laws; he had read the regulations carefully, and he knew what was allowed and what wasn’t. The Peak District National Park Authority had prosecuted mountain bikers before. He smiled in satisfaction, then immediately felt guilty. Owen said the main skills you needed as a Ranger were tact and diplomacy. Why get into an argument when you could achieve more with a friendly word of advice? Mark knew he had a lot to learn. Sometimes he couldn’t find the right things to say to people who appalled him with their stupidity and their disregard for their own safety, the property of others - and, above all, for the environment and its wildlife. That was their greatest crime, these people who desecrated the moors. The last thing they deserved was diplomacy. Though it was only two o’clock, it would be starting to go dark in a couple of hours’ time. For a few days now, Mark had noticed that peculiar half-light, like full moonlight, that came at five o’clock in the afternoon, when all the colours seemed to change and glow for a few minutes before fading into the darkness. The

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  Summer turning back of the clocks at the end of Briers Walkers Time always worried the Peak Park Rang were liable to miscalculate and still be on the hills when it went dark. cold, but Mark didn’t feel The afternoon was turning the chill. The red fleece jacket he wore prouit was dly, aalso

  its silver Peak Park insignia, kept him way came across a reassuring sight for the visitors a Rang - those who were lost and bewildered, exhausted or injured, or simply inadequately dressed and too poorly or walking the moors. The sight of the red equipped f was like a friendly . It meant a Ranger beacon. approaching.

  Jenny Weston had been in the act of smiling when rishe slipped shattered, her died. Her smile had as stiffened into a grin of fear ribs. coated, and with a The blade was sharp, tungsten

  lethal tip. It slit the cotton and a layer subcutaneous fat aslit through her skin anyer of a of blood thrust towards her Tea .and aalsingleh spur the her T-shirt turned splashed on to the handlebars of the Kokomo. the wound As soon as the knife was Withdrawn, looked hers Jenny looked closed and ceased to bleed esse the the red pressed down, astonished, and patch. Inside her ribcage, her heart sac was already filling with leaking blood; the pressure of it squeezed her heart and constricted its movement. Then her left lung deflated and a gush of fluids filled the cavity. She

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  began to feel light-headed; her hands and feet turned numb, and her legs lost the strength to hold her body upright. She made no resistance as she was grasped under the armpits and dragged across the clearing, with her heels leaving trails in the sandy soil. As fresh blood failed to reach her brain and extremities, her skin turned a dirty white; her legs and belly looked like lumps of boiled fish as they were deliberately exposed to the light. The blade of the knife left a red smear where it was wiped on the grass. From the handlebars of the bike, a small trickle of blood had run down on to the front wheel. It dripped slowly from spoke to spoke, already darkening and thickening in the air, until it was absorbed into the ground. By the time her attacker had finished, or not long after, Jenny Weston was dead. Mark knew it happened sometimes, but it was such a pointless thing to do. Mindless and irresponsible. Now and then the Ranger briefings mentioned a bike that had not been returned to the hire centre. Hirers had to give proof of their identity and leave a name and address, as well as a Ł20 deposit, so it was hardly worth trying to get away with a mountain bike, considering how easily you would get caught. But sometimes there was one who took the bike away with them. Occasionally, they simply abandoned it on one of the tracks, in a car park, or up here on the moor, like this one. None of it ever made sense to Mark.

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  The sight of the Kokomo under the gorse bush angered him unreasonably. Its presence w t like a violation - the evidence of selfish humanity ing into his world, like children pawing his most precious possessions with grubby fingers. The bike had been treated as just so much rubbish. Then Mark looked more closely. A streak of red had stained the canary yellow paintwork of the front stem and left rust-like spots on the spokes. He shivd with misgiving and fingered the radio in his pocket* Suddenly he wished he adn’t come out alone, after all. alongside him, no There was no reassuring p

  Owen there to know exactly Wa shaking hand, Mark made a note of the colour, With it the pages of model and number of the bike, crumpling his notebook in his haste to get it out of his pocket. The act of writing made him feel better, more in control, as if the ink marks on the page had magically brought a air: ‘Observe, keep a note, report familiar voice from the

  back.’ ‘Yes, Owen,’ whispered Mark. dng on his forehead and the back Feelingthesweat ryi bike of his neck, he forced himself to walk past the to where the stones were clustered among the spa ilg birches. Somebody had lit a fire here recently, scorched earth and a pile of white ash. People were always lighting fires near the Virgins, as if they thought the flames might melt their stony hearts. At the midsummer solstice, there were hundreds of folk up here at night, and they did a lot more than light fires. Mark stopped abruptly as he looked into the circle.

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  The sensations that came reminded him of the terrors of his puberty, the physical sickness and the guilt. He tried to concentrate on studying the ground, to look for evidence of bike tracks or footprints. He tried to think about casting around for telltale objects that might have been dropped by someone who had been in the area. I’m observing, he told himself. I must observe. Be professional and calm, and don’t rush into anything. But he couldn’t keep up the pretence for long. His eyes just wouldn’t focus on anything else. With shameful fascination, Mark found his attention drawn to the centre of the stone circle, where the white shape lay in such startling, rousing incongruity. ‘Oh, Jesus.’ The body of the woman sprawled obscenely among the stones. Her half-naked torso had been flung on the rough grass, her arms and legs twisted in provocative gestures. Her right knee was lifted high, to the level of her waist, and her left leg was stretched taut, as if she might be about to spring into the air. Mark could see every detail of the muscles in her legs, the tendons rigid under the skin at the top of her thigh, the faint crinkling of cellulite on her hips. Her pose was a caricature of life, a cruel parody of flamboyance and movement. Her hands were tilted at the wrist, her toes pointed downwards, and her head nodded to silent music. She was spread against the ground in a final arabesque, in a fatal pirouette, or the last fling of an abandoned tango. Mark wondered whether to write it down. But it sounded too strange, and his hand wouldn’t write any

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  more, anyway. Instead, he repeated it to himself, over and over, in his head. A dead woman dancing. She looked like a dead woman, dancing. Fifteen miles to the north, in the town of Edendale, the battle had been going on for an hour and a quarter already. The police officers in the front line were battered and breathing hard, their faces swollen with exertion, and their hair stuck to their foreheads with sweat. One or two had their shirts ripped. Another had blood trickling from a cut on his eye. Detective Constable Ben Cooper could see his colleague, Todd Weenink, deep in the thick of it. Weenink had two PCs from the Tactical Support Unit close on either side of him, and there were more men coming in from behind to assist them. They looked exhausted, their expressions grim, but determined. They were struggling against the odds, fighting a battle of containment that they were constantly in danger of losing. The students were charging forward in a solid mass, forcing the police to give ground under the onslaught. In the melee, close up, anything could be happening a poke in the
eye, a boot in the crutch, teeth sinking into an ear. The police had not been issued with riot shields or helmets today; there was no body armour, ^ no snarling Alsatians or horses to keep the students at

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  bay. There had been no authority given for the use of special weapons, no tear gas canisters held nervously in reserve. In addition, the police had to face a ceaseless barrage of noise - chanted slogans, shouts of abuse and a constant stream of profanities from a hostile crowd. Cooper pulled his hands out of his jeans pockets and turned his coat collar up to try to shut out the cacophony. If he could, he would have closed his eyes, too, to avoid seeing the slaughter, to stop himself from imagining the consequences if the police line collapsed. In

  Division. humiliatinoton a another moment, t Cont Constabulary end in

  for Derbyshire single arrest made so far. ‘What are we going to do, Sarge?’ he said. Detective Sergeant Rennie was an old a his had seen it all before. He rubbed his jowls, pulled closer around his shoulders, and winced as a PC went and was trampled underfoot. he said. ‘We’ll send out a quesdown Conduct a survey; ‘ tionnaire. ‘I suppose so. But it’s a bit pathetic, Cooper nodded.

  isn’t it?’ ‘We’ll make sure there are lots of tick boxes to fill in.’ ‘Even so … d sighed. ‘It’s all we can do, Ben. Rennie shrugged an Otherwise, we just have to sit back and let it happen.’ The police formed a wall and turned ltoeface Cooper attackers again. Beyond the opposing of the High could see the

  the lower slopes of the hill. They looked cammpus, set

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  down on Edendale like benign giants, the educational heights of the Eden Valley. He began to search his pockets for a packet of mints to take the taste of nausea from his mouth. He had a lot of pockets - in his jeans, in his checked shirt, on the inside and the outside of his waxed jacket. But all he found was a scatter of cashpoint receipts, two empty shotgun cartridge cases and half a packet of dog biscuits. Cooper knew there was more than just education that went on in those college buildings on the hill. He had been there himself, for long enough to collect the A-levels he needed to get into the police service. His fellow students had accused him of being singleminded, as if his determination made them guilty about their own pursuit of parties and casual sex. But there had been a demon driving Ben Cooper that his contemporaries would never have understood - a jealous God who would not have tolerated parties. Dave Rennie sat back comfortably in his seat and unscrewed the top of a vacuum flask. He offered Cooper a plastic cup, which he refused as soon as he got a whiff of the metallic tang of the coffee. The sergeant’s expression was serious, his forehead creased with anxiety, like a man with a great responsibility on his mind.

  ‘You see, if they get rid of the kitchen and sack the canteen staff, that means they’ll put vending machines in instead,’ he said. ‘And then what would happen? I mean, would anybody use them? There’s no point in spending money on vending machines if they don’t get

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  L used. It would look bad in the budgets, wasting money at a time like this.’ Todd Weenink duck his head and Cooper watched drive his shoulders forward to meet a wiry-haired youth who’d been tormenting him all afternoon. There was a thud as their skulls connected and a scuffing as their feet lashed out. The crowd behind Cooper began yelling. Then the police back-pedalled. Officers fell and were trampled as they lay on the ground. But Weenink broke away and looked around, bemused. His eyes were dazed, as if he might have taken a knock on the head. Then he looked up and caught sight of a student running past him, and made an instinctive grab. The student’s legs folded beneath him under the impact of Weenink’s sixteen stone, and they both sprawled in the mud, exhausted and gasping. Cooper smiled. Quite by chance, it had been the right student Weenink had flattened. The High Peak College wing-threequarter happened to be in possession of the ball, and had been racing for the touchline, within seconds of scoring the winning try of the match. Even while the two opposing players were struggling to get up again from the tackle, the referee blew the final’ whistle. The match had been saved: 12-10 to Edendale Police. ‘Thank God for that,’ said Cooper. ‘Honour preserved, I suppose; said Rennie, putting away his flask. ‘I don’t know about that, Sarge. But our lot always trash the bar if they lose.’

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  Cooper left the touchline and headed for the clubhouse. In his early days in E Division, they had tried to recruit him to the rugby team. They had thought he looked tall and fit enough to be an asset, but had accused him of lacking ruthlessness in the ruck. Now his job was to order the jugs of beer for the changingroom celebrations. Loyalty to your colleagues meant doing such things on a Sunday afternoon, even when you would rather be at home watching videos with your nieces. After ten years, Cooper was able to look back on his days at High Peak College with some nostalgia. His life had possessed a definite purpose then. Succeeding in his exams had been his role in life, and joining the police his destiny. The feeling had stayed with him through his time as a uniformed constable on the beat; it had followed him as he moved into CID and began to learn a different way of policing. His progress had been watched every inch of the way, and mostly approved of. Mostly. The times when he had made mistakes or expressed doubts were still imprinted in his memory. Then, two years ago, everything had changed. With the violent death of his father, Police Sergeant Joe Cooper, a prop had been knocked from under him, and a great weight had been lifted from his back. His guiding hand had been taken away, and his life had been given back to him. But it had already been too late for Ben Cooper. He had become what his father made him. ‘So that’s why we have to do this Vending Machine Usage Survey,’ said Rennie, pronouncing the capital letters carefully as he walked at Cooper’s shoulder. ‘To

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  get an idea of the possible take-up on the proposed new refreshment facilities. It’s so that somebody in Admin at HQ can make an informed decision. A decision supported by constructive feedback from the customer base.’ Cooper could practically see the internal memo that Rennie was quoting from. The sergeant had coffee soaking into his moustache. He was wearing knitted woollen gloves, for Heaven’s sake. He looked like somebody’s granddad on an off-season outing to Blackpool. Cooper was conscious that his own thirtieth birthday was approaching next year. It loomed in the distance like a summer storm cloud, making him feel his youth was nearly over before he had got used to being in his twenties. One day, he could be another Dave Rennie. ‘I think Todd might have got a bit of concussion, Sarge.’ ‘He always looks like that; said Rennie. ‘He got a knock on the head.’ ‘Don’t worry - Weenink doesn’t let anybody mess with him. He always gets his revenge.’ Todd Weenink was different, of course. During the last couple of months Cooper had found himself thrown together with Weenink in the latest round of restructuring in the division. In these circumstances, the relationship became almost like a marriage. The issue of ‘them and us’ became focused on a single individual. But there were times when you needed another officer at your side. Without the man or woman at your side, you could find yourself looking the wrong way at the wrong time You had to have a person you could put your trust in. They supported you; and you supported them. Cooper knew it was a law written in invisible ink on the back of the warrant card they gave you when you were sworn in as a constable. It was sewn into your first uniform like an extra seam; it was the page that they always forgot to print in the Police Training Manual. Only a couple of weeks earlier, Weenink had been the man at his side when they had raided a small-scale drugs factory in a converted warehouse on the outskirts of Edendale. One of the occupants had produced a pickaxe, but he had been too slow, and they had executed a takedown between them, with no one injured. Cooper reassured himself by thinking of his date with Helen Milner later on. Within an hour, he would be out of the rugby club and away. He and Helen hadn’t decided where they would go yet. Probably it would be a walk to get the noise out of his head, then a drink or two at the Light House before
a meal somewhere. The Light House was where they had gone the very first time they had gone out together. It was hardly more than two months ago that they had met again at Helen’s grandparents’ house in the village of Moorhay and resumed a relationship that had started when they were schoolfriends. But their new beginning had not been without difficulties. Nothing ever was. The clubhouse corridor smelled of sweat and mud and disinfectant, with a permanent underlying essence of embrocation. Dave Rennie helped Cooper carry the jugs of beer to the players in the visitors’ changing room. Then the sergeant’s pager began to bleep.

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  ‘Oh, God damn it. What now?’ Cooper watched Rennie go to the phone in the corridor. He looked back over his shoulder at the changingroom door, which swung open with the constant passing to and fro of players and supporters. Todd Weenink was out of the shower, towelling himself in the middle of a raucous mob, his naked bulk perfectly at home in a melee of pink male flesh and echoing laughter. Weenink already had a beer in front of him. It was amazing that he could keep up the pace. He had arrived for the match only at the very last minute, when everyone else was changed and ready to go out on the pitch, thinking they were going to have to play a man short, and cursing him for letting them down. No doubt Weenink had been out on the booze the night before and had woken up in someone else’s bed many miles away, with rugby the last thing on his mind. Cooper shook his head at the intrusive thoughts that came to him - the contrast between Weenink’s muscular, hairy nakedness and the picture he carried in his mind of the last colleague he had worked so closely with. Todd’s open, up-front, relaxed maleness was world away from Detective Constable Diane Fry. Former Detective Constable, he should say. Now Actin Detective Sergeant. It was a subject Cooper didn’t really want to thin1 about. It brought with it painful memories, some 01 which he still didn’t understand but suspected migh be his own fault.