Dancing With the Virgins Read online

  ‘A rustling noise,’ said Maggie hesitantly, at last.

  ‘The leaves again? He was walking through the leaves. You heard his feet in the leaves.’

  ‘Yes, there was that too. But something else. A plastic rustling. No, not plastic – nylon. He was wearing a nylon cagoule or anorak.’

  Fry felt a little surge of excitement. ‘That’s very good, Maggie. Think carefully now. Can you see it, this cagoule? What colour is it?’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Black. Maybe blue.’

  ‘That’s good. Can you describe it? Does it have buttons or a zip? Has it got a hood?’

  ‘I can’t tell.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Maggie paused. ‘It’s dark.’

  Fry opened her mouth and shut it again. She looked at the tape machine, wondering whether it had heard the same thing that she had. Then she stared at Maggie Crew, resisting an urge to grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her, to force her to answer the biggest question of all.

  ‘Maggie,’ she said, ‘what were you doing on the moor in the dark?’

  But Maggie was silent now. Fry thought she had lost her completely, that she had slipped away into sleep or some other world. But if she had, it was a world where there were only nightmares. Maggie’s body was rigid, her face strained and frightened. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut. She shook her head abruptly, like someone throwing off brambles tangled in her hair. Fry caught a glimpse of red, puckered tissue, glistening as if freshly burned.

  Then Maggie put her hands to her face, covering her right eye, her fingers pressed tightly to her forehead for protection. There was only the sound of her breathing in the room, a ragged hiss through her nose that the tapes would fail to catch, though they kept on turning. And there was a high, distant noise, like the wheeze in the chest of an asthmatic, or the faint whimper of a small creature dying at the side of the road.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ said Maggie. ‘I can’t remember.’

  19

  ‘Golden Virginia,’ said Owen Fox. ‘It’s their favourite.’

  Owen had a six-pack of lager in one hand, a tin of tobacco in the other. Ben Cooper followed him uncertainly. He had paid for the lager and tobacco, and he knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to be able to claim them back on expenses.

  ‘Are you sure it will work?’ said Cooper. ‘It seems a bit like bribing the natives with glass beads.’

  ‘It’s the only way to get close to these spiritual types,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve got to appeal to their materialism.’

  ‘Still –’

  ‘Trust me, Ben. I’m a Ranger.’

  But Cooper was still doubtful. It was because he knew he shouldn’t be there at all. This wasn’t an official visit – there had been no action form issued for him to conduct another interview with Calvin Lawrence and Simon Bevington. But he needed to talk to them on his own. There were things he couldn’t concentrate on properly with Diane Fry and a bunch of uniformed officers crowding round the van.

  Cooper could smell cigarette smoke on Owen’s jacket. He guessed he had been to see Cal and Stride quite recently, and his red fleece had absorbed the scent of their roll-ups. Owen walked up to the van and stood by the cab. He gestured to Cooper to stand out of sight, and knocked on the side door. It was an unusual knock, a series of short and long raps. After half a minute, the door slid partly open.

  ‘Cal,’ said Owen. ‘We come in peace.’

  ‘Bloody hell, it’s Red Rum. What’s up? Got no tourists to piss off?’

  ‘Yes, but pissing you off is more fun.’

  Cal stuck his head out of the door and spotted Cooper. ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘A bit of your friendly conversation. No hassle. He’s all right, Cal.’

  The youth stared at Cooper, then back at Owen. ‘You saying he’s all right? He’s a copper. Coppers is bastards, period.’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  Cal nodded. ‘Give us the cans then, you mean sod.’

  Owen winked at Cooper, and they clambered into the back of the VW. Cooper’s senses sprang instantly alive, awakened by the powerful mixture of scents and sensations contained in the van. Cal and Stride had been smoking roll-ups for months in the enclosed space, and their aroma had ingrained itself into the panels of the van and soaked into the blankets and cushions and sleeping bags that lay on the floor. There was the pungent smell of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes. And, overlying it, the odour of cooked food, including a lingering trace of the chicken curry they had eaten at least two days before. There was also a slightly worrying whiff of gas from the tworing camping stove behind the driver’s seat.

  Cooper hesitated when he saw Stride. He was sitting in the back corner, barely visible in the gloom.

  ‘Don’t worry about Stride,’ said Cal. ‘He’s just doing an auric egg.’

  ‘OK. That’s fine.’

  Cooper eyed Stride cautiously. He didn’t seem to be doing much of anything, really, let alone laying an egg. He was very still, sitting upright, with his eyes closed and his hands in his lap. The expression on his face was concentrated, but calm. Cooper wondered if Stride genuinely hadn’t noticed there was anyone else in the van. It seemed unlikely. It must just be a bit of acting talent, mustn’t it?

  ‘It’s to protect himself against negative mind energies,’ said Cal.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He puts a shell round his aura.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Owen settled himself on a pillow to one side of an old chest of drawers. Cooper followed suit on the other side. He felt something hard pressing into his hip. He looked down to find the biscuit tin packed with small mementoes that Stride had searched in for his NUS card.

  The boy’s entire previous life was crammed into that tin. Maybe he very rarely opened it, but at least he had brought it with him into his new life. It was useless for him to pretend that memories of his past life held no value for him. The evidence said differently.

  ‘So what are you doing here on your own?’ said Cal. ‘Where’s the heavy mob?’

  ‘I just wanted to talk. I thought I might be able to help.’

  Cal snorted. ‘Bullshit. Since when did the cops help the likes of us? You’re employed by middle-class, middle-aged folk with their property and comfortable lives to protect.’

  ‘People like your parents, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, people like them.’

  ‘Well, we’re here to protect everybody.’

  ‘Stuff that. I don’t pay your wages. I don’t pay any taxes. So why should you bother about me?’

  Cooper hesitated while he considered the answer. Everything depended on saying the right thing.

  ‘Hey,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve just realized – that means you don’t pay my wages either. Well, what a revelation.’ He started to get up, brushing down his jacket. ‘That’s that, then. I’ll be off. I can’t be wasting my time with a couple of dirty, idle gypsies. I’ve got nice, clean middle-class people to look after.’

  ‘Yeah. Fuck off, then,’ said Cal, popping the ring-pull off a can of lager.

  Owen stood over him. He didn’t say anything. Cal looked at Cooper. ‘I hate this bastard in the red jacket,’ he said. ‘He thinks he’s my dad or something.’

  ‘We all know you never had a father, Calvin,’ said Owen.

  ‘And if you call me Calvin again, I’ll set fire to your fuckin’ beard.’

  ‘Get the matches out then, Calvin.’

  Cal’s eyes glittered. He offered a can to Cooper, who shook his head. Then he held it up above his head, and the Ranger took it.

  ‘We both came for the solstice,’ said Cal. ‘That’s how we ended up in this quarry. There were loads of people parked down here then. It was like a real community. But the van broke down, and I had no dosh to get it repaired. It’s something to do with the drive shaft, they reckon. Coming down that slope knackered it.’

  ‘And you’ve stayed ever since.’

  ‘Everyb
ody else drifted off and left us.’

  ‘Did you and Stride come together?’

  ‘No, we didn’t know each other until then. He’d been camping over the valley there – the place they call Robin Hood’s Stride. There’s a cave there, some kind of hermit’s place or something, where he was sheltering. He didn’t know anything about the Nine Virgins, but he wandered over to see what was happening. That’s how we met up, and that’s why we called him Stride. We just seemed to hit it off. He had nowhere else to go, you see.’

  Cooper realized he was being watched. He had forgotten Stride for a moment. He had been so still and quiet he could have been camouflaged by an entire forest of trees instead of sitting there in full view a few inches away. His eyes were open now and he was looking at Cooper.

  ‘Nowhere else to go,’ he said.

  Stride’s paleness was worrying. Cooper wondered what medical attention the two youths had access to. None, he supposed. In an earlier age, Stride would have been described as sickly and consumptive. Cooper would have liked to find out how he came to be camping in a hermit’s cave in the Peak District in the first place. But it seemed too big a question to ask.

  ‘You went to university, didn’t you?’ he said.

  Stride nodded. Cal passed him the tobacco and the Rizlas, and he began to roll a cigarette.

  ‘What degree did you get?’

  Stride smiled. ‘Did I say I got a degree?’

  ‘It’s usually the reason for going to university.’

  ‘Only if you finish the course. Otherwise they get a bit stuffy about giving it to you.’

  ‘I see. You dropped out.’

  Now Stride laughed. ‘You might call it that.’

  ‘So what were you studying?’

  Stride stared at him, a sudden gleam in his eye, his hand fluttering to his mouth in that curious gesture. Energy seemed to visibly flow through him. From an almost catatonic state he was transformed into a ball of vitality.

  ‘You really want to know?’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘What?’

  He was excited now, tugging at Cooper’s sleeve like a puppy wanting him to come out and play. Cooper looked at Owen, who just smiled and nodded affectionately at Stride.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You might learn something.’

  They jumped out of the van, and Cooper scrambled up the path after Stride to reach the top of the quarry. The chimes were moving slowly in the birch, jingling gently. One of them turned and caught the sunlight, and Cooper could almost make out the words scrawled on the silver foil in felt-tipped pen.

  Stride turned to him at the top of the quarry face and held his hand to his ear, like a bad actor miming his reaction to a knock at the door.

  ‘Can you hear it? We’re right on the edge.’

  ‘The edge?’

  Cooper listened. All he could hear was the wind which caught at him now they were on the plateau. It carried a whispering in the bracken and the jingle of the chimes. He listened more carefully. He heard several types of bird call – finches twittering nearby, a robin singing in the birches, the jackdaws in Top Quarry; and something else further away, possibly rooks and a blackbird. There was nothing more. Cooper looked up. There was a kestrel hovering over the rough grass on the edge of the quarry, but it was absolutely silent.

  ‘Do you hear it?’ said Stride. ‘That’s great.’

  ‘The edge of what?’

  ‘The reality zone. From here on, all that stuff down there disappears.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of Matlock and the A6.

  ‘Not for me, it doesn’t.’

  Suddenly, Stride threw himself full-length into the damp bracken. For a moment, he disappeared completely as the brown leaves closed over him. Only his laugh could be heard from somewhere in the dripping depths.

  ‘Look at this!’ he said. His head appeared. He wiped a bracken leaf across his face, smearing the rain water on his skin and licking the moisture off his lips, closing his eyes in ecstasy. Bits of foliage and fragments of dead heather were clinging to his hair and shoulders; the sleeves of his jacket were soaked.

  ‘I suppose you think this is just a weed. Farmers tear it up and burn it, because it’s a pest. But bracken is a miracle. All ferns are a miracle. Look, look.’ He stroked a tiny, furled leaf. It would probably never open now – it was too late in the year. ‘Each of these produces hundreds of spores. They’re spread around by the wind or animals. I’m doing it now. Look!’ He rolled over on the ground, laughing breathlessly. ‘I’m part of the process! I’m part of nature!’

  Stride plucked a larger leaf and held it in front of Cooper’s face. ‘Every spore that lands grows into a little disc. And do you know what? It has both male and female sexual organs. It’s a bisexual. Humans will tell you that isn’t natural. But it is!’

  He thrust the leaf into Cooper’s hands. It smelled damp and green and broken. Cooper held it lightly, not sure what to do with it, reluctant just to walk away, too intrigued by the performance to stop it.

  ‘The male organs release sperm. Oh, yes. We know about sperm, don’t we? But ferns … their sperm use the rain water. See? The leaves are always damp up here, in the autumn, so the sperm can travel through the moisture to reach the female organs and fertilize the eggs. And then a new plant grows. A new fern. More bracken. More and more of it. And you know what else? Ferns have been doing that for three hundred million years.’

  Stride stared at Cooper wildly. ‘Prehistoric tree ferns grew to over a hundred feet. They’re way down there now, under the ground, still there. Fossilized tree ferns. We call them coal.’ He snatched the leaf back from Cooper as if he wasn’t worthy to hold it. ‘So which is the most successful species? The cleverest? The most efficient? The most useful? Humans?’ He laughed. ‘I studied botany. They tried to tell me it was a science; they tried to make me study mycology and phytopathology. They wanted me to look at diagrams of a monocotyledon or analyse the process of hydrotropism. They wanted me to see pistils and radicles and calyxes. But all I saw were miracles everywhere. Miracles of life.’

  He stepped out of the bracken and bent down to the ground near the path. He picked up a small piece of quartz. He held it with gentleness, handling it as if it were a living thing, sensitive to his touch.

  ‘Look at the earth. She looks so attractive, you could stroke her. Her fur is like velvet. But she’s a wild creature, she can never be tamed. A huge beast, sleeping. Or maybe only pretending to be asleep. This is her body.’

  Cooper was silent, feeling foolish and embarrassed, like a man who had wandered into the wrong church service and didn’t know what to do when everyone else prayed.

  ‘The dancers know all about it,’ said Stride. ‘The dancers became part of her body.’

  A suggestion of movement on the moor made Cooper look up. For a moment, he thought there were people standing in the trees at the scene of Jenny Weston’s murder – grey shapes that passed each other slowly, leaning to whisper to one another across the sandy earth of the clearing. Then he realized that he was seeing the Nine Virgins themselves, the stones momentarily transformed by the intensity of Stride’s conviction.

  ‘I can understand why our ancestors worshipped trees,’ said Stride. ‘Can’t you? When you hear a chainsaw in the woods, when you see a JCB and smell new tarmac, don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel, deep inside your head, the cry of “murder”? Do you understand?’

  Cooper frowned, wanting to see what he meant. ‘I understand that you’ve found some sort of truth for yourself.’

  ‘Believe those who are seeking the truth,’ said Stride. ‘But doubt those who say they’ve found it.’

  When they got back to the van, Stride seemed rapidly to become exhausted. He collapsed on the cushions, stretched out full-length, limp and breathing raggedly. After a few minutes, he spoke, though his voice was barely loud enough for them to hear.

  ‘I can still see her face,’ he said.

  Stride’s own face was hidden by the shadows o
f the candle, expressionless, moving with the flickering light in unnatural ways. Cooper felt too warm in the claustrophobic interior of the van. He was uncomfortably hemmed in by the rugs and blankets and the smell of unwashed bodies, too tightly embraced by the metal walls. He longed for escape.

  ‘Whose face?’ he said.

  But Stride seemed to have departed. Though his body still sprawled against the cushions, his mind had left, perhaps to drift over the moor with the kestrel. He had sunk into a state of exhaustion, and when he spoke again it was no more than a whisper, addressed only to himself.

  ‘I can still see her face.’

  Owen and Cal seemed at ease with each other. Cooper wondered what they had talked about while he was away, whether they had simply exchanged comfortable insults as they drank their beer. Owen drained his can and they all went outside, leaving Stride alone. Cal was still looking at Cooper suspiciously.

  ‘Do you really not have a life to go back to, Cal?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh, yeah. If I wanted to. There are the aged parents, if I want to spend the rest of my life being lectured at. There was a girlfriend as well. But, well … sometimes you’re better off on your own, you know?’

  ‘But you’re not on your own now.’

  ‘Me and Stride? Stride says it was karma, us meeting like that. You know, the idea of fate repaying you for what you’ve done in a previous life?’

  ‘He seems to be quite knowledgeable about esoteric practices.’

  ‘He knows sod all about it,’ said Cal.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s picked up a few phrases from books here and there, that’s all. But it keeps him content in himself. That’s what religion is for, isn’t it? Whatever he believes in, it works for him.’

  ‘Like the auric egg.’

  ‘Yeah, well. If he actually believes it keeps negative mind energies away, then it probably does.’

  Cooper considered this. It seemed as useful as any advice a psychiatrist could have given.

  ‘How well do you really know Stride?’

  ‘He’s my brother.’