Blind to the bones bcadf-4 Read online

  ‘Yes, an older brother. What’s interesting about that?’

  ‘I don’t know really. Just the older brother/older sister thing. It can be complicated, can’t it?’

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  ‘I wouldn’t know/ said Cooper, who had decided he wasn’t going to give away even the slightest detail of his private life that^

  she didn’t know already.-51

  ‘Anyway, I made out I was an old college friend of yours who’d-2j

  lost touch with you. I asked if you still lived there, at the farm.

  And your brother told me you’d moved out, and he gave me your new address. He’s not like you, is he? He wasn’t suspicious of me at all. I take it he’s not a copper.’

  ‘Of course not. He’s a farmer.’

  That part of the story, at least, would be easy enough to check out with Matt. Bridge End Farm was certainly in the Yellow Pages, but Angie could have thought that through. As for where she had heard that he was a farm boy in the first place, it seemed to Cooper that there was only one person who might have told Angie Fry that. And it made no sense at all.

  ‘What else did you hear about me?’ he said.

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. What else is there to know about you?’

  ‘Not very much. But I’m curious where you heard anything about me at all.’

  She hid her face in her coffee mug, lowering her eyes. ‘I asked around. Everyone knows you.’

  That last bit was true, at least - Cooper could hardly deny that. There were far too many people in Edendale who knew all about him. Diane had told him he was mad to move into this flat in the centre of town, where he would be so close to so many people who knew exactly who he was and might have reason to bear a grudge. But it had caused no problems for him. Not until tonight, anyway.

  ‘You’re looking happier,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re smiling a lot. You weren’t smiling like that when you arrived.’

  ‘It must be because I feel at ease with you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, you’re a good listener. But then, I suppose you’d say you’re trained to be.’

  Cooper put down his mug. ‘You’d better get to the point and tell me what it is you want from me.’

  ‘Oh …’

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  He could feel himself starting to lose patience then. Angie was intruding into his private life uninvited and without a proper explanation, and he really didn’t have to be polite to her all evening, if he didn’t feel like it.

  There’s no point in pretending you don’t want something,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t have gone through all that business with the Yellow Pages and phoning up farmers called Cooper if you didn’t want something from me, Angie. So I don’t want to hear any more of this rubbish. Just cut to the chase, and tell me what you want. Then I can say “no” and go back to my own life.’

  Angie looked down at her coffee mug. She was still clutching it, though he had watched her tip back the last drops of coffee several minutes ago. Her fingers were tight and white at the joints. They moved restlessly against the smooth porcelain, tracing the slightly raised shapes of Homer and Marge. Backwards and forwards her fingers went, following the shapes, keeping themselves moving. Reluctantly, Cooper found he couldn’t hold on to his burst of irritation.

  ‘Have you spoken to Diane recently?’ he said.

  Angie shook her head.

  ‘When? Not since you left Warley?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But that was years and years ago.’

  ‘It’s fifteen years.’

  Cooper restrained an exclamation. It was beyond his comprehension how sisters could be apart for fifteen years without getting in touch with each other. But stranger things happened in families.

  ‘I know Diane has been looking for you,’ he said. ‘In fact, she’s been looking for you very hard recently. She once told me it was the reason she’d come to Derbyshire, because she’d managed to track you down as far as Sheffield and this was as near as she could get.’

  ‘Yes, I know she’s been looking for me.’

  Cooper began to get impatient again. ‘Well, if you know that, what’s the problem? You’ve found me, so I’m sure you could have found Diane a whole lot easier. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to talk to Diane for you? Maybe arrange a meeting? You want to do it gradually, is that what you’re worried about? I know it’s going to be a shock for both of you, after so long.’

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  Angle listened him out with a defiant stare. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong/ she said. ‘Completely wrong.’

  ‘What then?’

  She leaned forward suddenly, thrusting her narrow face towards him, so that he couldn’t avoid the stare of her pale eyes or miss the tiny lines clustered around her temples, lines etched by years of pain.

  ‘I want you to explain to her that I never want to see her again/ she said. ‘I want you to tell her to leave me alone.’

  Cooper sat back, shocked by the vehemence that was suddenly in her voice. ‘You don’t mean that/

  ‘Mean it?’ Now she put the mug down on the table, with a crack like the noise of an air rifle. ‘Believe me, I don’t want my little sister back in my life. And I’m damn sure she doesn’t really need me back in hers. But there’s no way I can try to tell her that myself. She’s so damn stupid and pigheaded that she wouldn’t believe me. I know from past experience that she only believes what she wants to hear, and I could never do any wrong as far as she was concerned. She never saw the real me, no matter how much I shoved it in her face/

  ‘People change a lot in fifteen years/ said Cooper quietly.

  ‘Do you think she’s changed? Or would you say she was still like that?’

  He sat back. ‘Go on/

  ‘But you could convince her, couldn’t you? Diane would believe you. They say you’re the man who believes in things like telling the truth. Is that right? Or are you going to be another one who just pisses me about?’

  ‘If Diane wants to make contact with you again, who am I to make a different decision for her?’

  ‘It’s not your decision, it’s mine. And I’m her big sister, so I know best/ Angie sighed. ‘OK, what can I do? Will you listen if I tell you the whole story?’

  Cooper hesitated. From the little Diane had said, he wasn’t sure it was anything he really wanted to hear. But what else was he going to be doing this evening?

  ‘Like you said, I’m a good listener/

  So Angie told him. It took fifteen to twenty minutes, with frequent pauses. But Cooper got the sense of the girl who had rebelled against her family situation, who had been desperate to escape from the nightmare she had got herself trapped in. Any

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  escape route must have looked attractive to her then. But she had only been leaving one trap to enter another.

  ‘We were both taken into care by Social Services. I was eleven, and Diane was nine. They said my parents had been abusing me. Well, of course they had. My dad anyway, and my mum knew. No point trying to pretend it didn’t happen.’

  ‘And Diane, too?’ said Cooper.

  Angie hesitated. ‘Has she said so?’

  ‘She says she can’t remember.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ But then her tone changed. ‘Well, she was only a kid. Maybe she can’t. But you see why I know she won’t have changed now. The fear goes way back when.’

  ‘You were fostered together, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. They kept moving us on to different places, though. So many different places that I can’t remember them. It was because of me that we didn’t stay anywhere long. I was big trouble wherever we went. But Di thought the sun shone, and she screamed the roof down at the idea of being split up from me. In the end, I couldn’t stick it any longer. I left our last foster home when I was sixteen, and never went back. I haven’t seen Diane since. And it’s much better that w
ay, believe me.’

  ‘I know you were already using heroin,’ said Cooper.

  ‘So she told you all about that, too? She must really think a lot of you, Ben.’

  ‘I think it just slipped out.’

  Angie raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, yeah? My little sister doesn’t let things slip out, unless it’s for a reason.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Well, you’re right. The thing is, I was stealing stuff from the house to pay for it. Stealing from our foster parents. That’s why there was so much trouble. They just couldn’t deal with it, with the idea that this was the way I showed my gratitude. So I had all this shit flying around my head all the time until I thought I was going to be sick on their Axminster carpet, and all I could think about was the next hit. You know, as long as you get your daily fix, you don’t care about anyone. You’ll use anybody, steal or rob, just for a hit. They always say it’s the needle that some people get addicted to, not the drug. They call it needle fever. So it was better for me to leave - better for Di, too. I couldn’t stand the thought that she would follow the same route.’

  Angie was staring at the ceiling again, rather than look at

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  Cooper. As he had expected, tears began to form in the corners of her eyes as she spoke. She made no attempt to wipe them away, and they streaked her face as they trickled across her cheekbones.

  ‘So it’s not quite true that you didn’t care about anyone,’ said Cooper.

  Angie flushed. ‘Don’t try to trap me. I’m telling it like it was. You need to know that, no matter how strong you are, heroin is stronger. I’ve done cold turkey many times, and they’ve had me on a detox programme. Do you know how long you have to wait for help from the Drugs Service? Up to twenty-eight weeks for an appointment. Six months. Do you know what can happen to you in that time? Do you know how easy it is to die? It doesn’t take six months. I went through hell doing all that, but I always went back to the drugs. No matter how strong you are, heroin is stronger in the end. It’s always there in your brain, and it just calls you and calls you. I know Diane would try to make me stop, but I couldn’t deal with that. Neither of us could deal with that.’

  Cooper was silent. Despite the deception and the performance he was watching now, the feeling was creeping over him that Angie Fry was essentially telling him the truth. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but there was sufficient doubt in his mind.

  ‘I’m still not sure that I shouldn’t phone Diane right now and tell her you’re here,’ he said.

  ‘They told me you were Di’s friend. If you care anything about her, you won’t let this happen to her. You won’t let me happen to her.’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘The trouble is, I really don’t think there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘She has false hopes, don’t you realize that?’ said Angie, with a brief flash of anger that Cooper found familiar. ‘Diane has expectations that I can never live up to. Quite the opposite. When she found out the truth about my life, she would be so ashamed of her sis that it would knock the bottom out of her world. She always had a kind of fragile sense of security. She always needed something to hang onto to make her feel safe in the world.’ She paused, and gave him that challenging smile, even through the tears. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me that people change in fifteen years?’

  Cooper wanted to tell her exactly that, but sensed that Angie was right. It fitted in with his own impressions of Diane. He had always thought there was an underlying fear that she barely kept

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  suppressed by hanging on to the stable things in her lite - her job, and her promotion ambitions. And her memories of her sister.

  ‘Are you on or off it right now?’ said Cooper.

  Angie Fry smiled that slow, sad smile, but with the instant deviousness in her eyes, the expression that told him she was wondering what lie to use.

  ‘Maybe I’d better not tell you that/ she said. ‘You being a policeman, and all. I wouldn’t want to compromise your principles.’

  And Cooper knew she was right. If Angie was using heroin now, he would be in difficulties. If she had to get her fix while she was here, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be forced into that position.

  But he couldn’t help studying her eyes, an automatic reflex from his training. Of course, Angie saw him doing it, and met his stare with undisguised challenge.

  ‘Red eyes, it’s dope,’ she said. ‘Dilated means amphetamines. But “pinny” eyes - then, it’s heroin.’

  Cooper kept on looking. But something must be wrong with his powers of observation. When he looked into Angle’s eyes, he couldn’t see any of the symptoms of drug abuse. All he could see were the pain and the loneliness. And beyond them, that brief flicker that turned his heart for a moment as he looked deep into the eyes of Angle’s younger sister.

  He watched her pick up her rucksack from the floor. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  She straightened up, pushed the hair from her forehead, gave him that smile. ‘I don’t know. Can you recommend a good shop doorway somewhere? I’ve got the sleeping bag.’

  ‘You’re living rough?’

  ‘I’m on the streets. What did you think? That I was staying in some smart little hotel with room service and an en-suite bathroom?’

  ‘Haven’t you got any money?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to get any today.’

  ‘How do you usually get money?’

  ‘How do you think?’

  He hoped she meant by begging, but he decided not to press it. ‘You shouldn’t be sleeping on the streets, Angie.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘It isn’t safe.’

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  ‘So? If you’re so concerned about it, what arc you going to do? Are you going to ask me to stay the night here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, I thought not. It wouldn’t do, would it? What would people say? What would our Di say?’

  She went out into the hallway and opened the front door. Cooper held it for her while she pulled her rucksack over her thin shoulders, and watched her step out on to the pavement. She looked around, weighing up which way to go, trying to remember where the shops were, or whether there was a park she might find, and a shelter with a vacant bench.

  ‘There are plenty of benches by the river walk, but it’ll be colder down there,’ said Cooper. ‘Water loses heat faster at night.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip,’ she said.

  ‘The market square is quiet, but only after about three o’clock in the morning, when the night-club crowds have gone home. And it’s market day tomorrow, so the market staff will arrive at 5 a.m. to start setting up the stalls. That can be a bit noisy.’

  Thanks a lot.’

  ‘And if you slept on my sofa, you’d have to put up with the cats. They’re a complete pain. Diane hates cats, so I expect you do, too.’

  She looked down the street again. Cooper could hear the sound of the cars on Meadow Road. There was a car stereo playing rap music far too loud, and somebody burning rubber off their tyres as they accelerated from the lights. A traffic patrol would be hanging around later to discourage the boy racers. There was a burst of raucous laughter and the rattle of a can on the pavement.

  ‘I’m not like Diane at all/ said Angle. ‘I’m quite the opposite, in fact. I thought you would have realized that by now.’

  Cooper looked at her slim hand brushing away the hair, the narrow shoulders, the wiry body, the challenging look in her eyes as she turned towards him. ‘You’re not entirely the opposite/ he said.

  ‘Maybe not. But I’ll tell you something - I don’t mind cats. I quite like them, within reason.’

  ‘Reason has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you’ll have to be out of here by 8 a.m.’

  ‘Do you have to be at work?’

  ‘Out by 8 a.m./ said Cooper.

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  ‘OK, it’s a deal,
then. Cats and all.’

  He took her rucksack off her as she walked him past him back into the house.

  Thanks, by the way/ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s OK, there’s no need to say “you’re welcome”. Because I know I’m not. You just had a sudden vision of me being attacked by some pervert on a bench by the river during the night. And then it might have come out that the friendly local bobby, Constable Cooper, had told me that was the best place to sleep. Not good for your reputation, eh?’

  Till get you some blankets,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

  For a moment, Cooper remembered the feeling he’d experienced just before he answered the door to Angie. That premonition of disaster.

  But he pushed the feeling aside. She’d be out of his flat by 8 a.m. tomorrow - he’d make sure of it. And that would be the last he would ever see of Angie Fry. He’d make certain of that, too.

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  20

  Tuesday

  For the past three nights, Diane Fry had dreamed that she found Emma Renshaw’s body. Emma had been dead for two years, and the skin had shrunk to pale tatters on her skull, so that it had become a rubber mask that could be twisted and rearranged into any shape you wanted. For Fry, it transformed into the face of a sixteen-year-old girl - a face as familiar to her as her own, and yet alien. A face that left her sweating, and thrashing her limbs in tangled bedclothes.

  Fry knew this fear. This kind of fear was insidious. You could go to bed at night feeling free of it. Yet when you woke in the morning, you found it had descended from the darkest corners of your room and clung to you like cobwebs.

  So the smell, the sound or the movement that she knew ought to be innocent, suggesting safety, now brought with it not a specific fear, nor a memory of the event that had scarred her in the first place. Instead, it created a sort of general dread, a vague, shapeless terror of something she couldn’t picture or name. In everything now she saw something to fear. The blood in the poppies, the mould in the grass. The bones under the skin of the girl.