Dancing with the Virgins bcadf-2 Read online

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  ‘Not about that, Simon. About the murder of Jenny Weston.’

  Stride could be sharp enough when he wanted to be. Yet his eyes were closing, and he looked about to drift off to whatever place it was he went to.

  ‘I don’t know who killed her,’ said Stride. ‘There’s no point in asking me.’

  ‘Maybe not. But it was you that found the body first, at least,’ said Cooper. ‘Nobody else would have arranged her like that, in the stone circle. I have to tell you that Jenny was no virgin, Simon. And it wasn’t the Fiddler who made her dance. It was you.’

  Stride closed his eyes tightly. His face was a ghastly white now, as pale as the underside of one of those obscene fungi that never saw the light.

  ‘But I don’t believe you killed her either,’ said Cooper. ‘Not you or Cal. Not in a million years. It was you that made Jenny dance, Simon. But you and I both know that it’s someone else who has been playing the tune.’

  Diane Fry watched Todd Weenink make his way round the edge of the building, looking for their car. DI Hitchens rolled down the window to speak to him.

  ‘There’s not much we can do,’ said Hitchens, ‘if the women don’t seem to be committing any offence. They could just be here for the auction, like anybody else. They do let spectators in, apparently.’

  ‘But they’re not even trying to go inside,’ said Weenink. ‘The town centre PC has spoken to them, but they say they’re just looking at the animals.’

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  Fry leaned across. ‘What do you think their intentions are, sir?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Hitchens. ‘All we can do is keep an eye on them.’

  ‘They’re going to be in the way,’ said Weenink. ‘Do you want to call it off?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Hitchens. ‘We can’t do that. We need an arrest.’

  ‘There is one thing,’ said Weenink. He looked at Diane Fry in the passenger seat. ‘One of the women is known to us.’

  ‘You recognized her?’

  Fry felt a cold sensation. There was an awful inevitability about what Weenink was going to say. He was looking at her when he spoke again, not at the DI.

  ‘It’s that woman who was attacked the first time. The one who had her face cut.’

  ‘You mean Maggie,’ said Fry.

  ‘Yes, her,’ said Weenink. ‘Maggie Crew is with them.’

  As Ben Cooper walked through the door of the CID room, the phone was already ringing. It was Cheshire Police at last.

  ‘Your people are back,’ said the DC in Wilmslow. ‘Mr and Mrs Daniels. They had booked a midweek flight to Ringway, so that was lucky. They’ve been to Hawaii, had a great time and they’ve got wonderful suntans. It makes me sick.’

  ‘When can they come to make an identification?’ ‘They’re on their way. They’ll be with you in a couple of hours.’

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  ‘Have they said anything?’

  ‘Mainly “Aloha” and “Book him, Danno.”’

  The Cheshire DC sounded much too cheerful for Cooper’s liking. Policing must be very different in the affluent towns on the plains between the Pennines and Wales to make him so happy in his work.

  ‘What about their daughter? Did you ask them when they saw her last?’

  ‘Yes, but it was months ago. They’re upset about what’s happened to her, but not too surprised, it seems to me. They never expected her to come back home when she left. Rosalind said as much to them, in fact. She said she had things she wanted to do with her life, which didn’t involve them. She also said she was going off to find her real mother.’

  Cooper frowned. He thought the DC was making another joke. ‘Sorry? What was that?’

  ‘She’s not the Daniels’ real daughter, apparently. They adopted Rosalind nineteen years ago. Brought her up as their own and all that. But they finally told her she was adopted when she came of age. And, far from showing any gratitude, she seemed to resent them for it, according to Mrs D. It seems Rosalind decided to opt out of the respectable life they had planned for her and got into bad company. She got involved in all sorts of causes, but animal rights was her latest big thing. She’d been in trouble a few times already for her part in some demos that went too far. Direct action, they call it. Trespass, criminal damage - you know the sort of thing. Like Mrs Daniels says herself, “Blood will out.” I thought that was rather an unfortunate turn of phrase myself.’

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  ‘So Ros Daniels was looking for her real mother?’ ‘That’s right. What do you think, mate? Do you

  reckon she ever found her? It would be something at least, before she got killed.’

  The women had gathered in the corner of the cattle market car park. They huddled together in a tight circle of anoraks, bending towards each other conspiratorially, with glances towards the buildings behind them and at the PC waiting by the offices.

  For a few minutes, Maggie Crew stood to one side, a little outside the circle, hesitating, as if unsure whether she was part of the group or not. But then the women parted and let her in, and immediately she was absorbed and became one of their number. Under the cover of coats and shoulder bags, there was a surreptitious glint of steel. And Maggie found herself in possession of a knife.

  Diane Fry stood with Todd Weenink below the seating of the store ring, where they could see the group in the car park from the shadows. Fry took Maggie’s presence as a personal insult. It was as if the woman were taunting her.

  ‘It’s her, all right,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t make a mistake with a face like that,’ said Weenink.

  ‘What the hell is she up to?’

  ‘Is she a member of this animal rights group?’

  ‘Not that I know of. If she is, it’s another thing she never told me.’

  ‘Here comes Slasher, anyway,’ said Weenink. ‘The

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  DI wants to do it now, before the women cause any complications. You know, like women do.’

  Teasdale was herding a group of brown heifers from the outdoor pens towards the auction ring, swishing his stick from side to side as they clattered against the steel gates. Fry waited for Teasdale to look up. Then she saw him glance towards the women and see Maggie. He winced, half-closing his eyes at the sight of her scars, stared for a moment, then went back to his job. No recognition.

  As Teasdale walked past them towards the ring, he twitched his stick against the haunches of a lumbering heifer. He grinned up at the police officers, showing a double gap in his teeth. Watching Fry, he gave the ani-mal an extra slap between its back legs, and it broke into a frightened trot.

  Fry looked at Maggie. She was frowning at the treatment of the animal, but showed no sign of recognizing Teasdale. DI Hitchens was already waiting for Fry near the ring, and she turned towards him to help make the arrest.

  Ben Cooper ran down to the control room. He needed to get the information through to DI Hitchens and Diane Fry as soon as possible. There were too many coincidences stacking up. How was it that Daniels had been killed at about the same time and in the same place that Maggie had been injured? And Jenny Weston, whom Daniels had lived with for a short while? Was it really Maggie who had been waiting to meet Jenny on the moor?

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  Before he could do anything, Cooper became aware that the control room sergeant was already taking an urgent call from Edendale cattle market.

  Suddenly, the group of women had begun to surge forward. They surrounded a cattle transporter in which two large dogs were occupying the cab - an Alsatian and a Rottweiler. The dogs began to leap around on the seats, bouncing off the half-open windows and setting up a loud, furious barking as the women crowded round the lorry.

  ‘Remember Ros Daniels!’ one woman shouted. ‘She didn’t die for nothing!’

  Weenink signalled to the PC and they moved towards the women to intercept them. But Diane Fry was watching Maggie, startled by the transformation in her manner. Maggie stood transfixed as the officers moved in. She had tilte
d her head to one side to listen to something, and her nostrils flared as if at a distinctive smell. Her whole body had changed; she straightened and stood to her full height. Her eyes widened in astonishment.

  Just before the broad shoulders of DC Weenink moved in front of her, Fry saw Maggie’s expression change again. Shock was followed by fear, then anger. Her mouth opened in a scream of rage.

  Then there was a confused melee, a mass of suddenly struggling bodies, shouting and shrieking. Fry couldn’t see what was happening, and she could tell that the women and the police officers didn’t know what was going on either. There were just a lot of bodies near to

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  each other, barging, stumbling and staggering, like cattle herded too close together.

  Then a gap appeared and Maggie was standing in the middle of it, with a knife in her hand. A trickle of blood ran down the blade to the hilt and dripped on to her finger. But Maggie didn’t notice it. She looked as though her mind was far away from the cattle market, maybe somewhere up on Ringham Moor on a night she had almost wiped from her memory. She seemed oblivious to the stunned crowd close around her, unaware of the noise of screaming women and barking dogs. Unaware of the body of DC Todd Weenink, lying on the concrete at her feet.

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  The voice on the radio was becoming incoherent as it called on Control for an ambulance and backup. It requested officers with protective equipment, dog handlers, and a public order team for a violent person arrest. Ben Cooper leaned in towards the control room sergeant. ‘Who is it?’ he said. ‘Please confirm the identity of the female suspect,’ said the sergeant. ‘The woman’s name is Maggie Crew.’ ‘OK, support is on its way.’ ‘The suspect is armed, Control. We need an ARV.’ ‘Understood.’ Cooper and the sergeant looked at each other. There was no Armed Response Vehicle anywhere in E Division. The nearest would be patrolling the M1 in the Chesterfield area, nearly half an hour away. Cooper knew it could be too late. ‘Sarge, remind the Duty Inspector that I’m an approved firearms officer,’ he said.

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  Diane Fry had followed Maggie Crew as far as a long, narrow passage between the two sale rings. On one side were rows of steel pens packed with nervous calves; on the other side, a breeze-block wall was lined with plastic barrels of some dark liquid, stored for a later sale. Maggie stopped and stared at her. ‘Well, you’ve done it in the end, Diane. Congratulations. You got under my skin, like a parasite I couldn’t get rid of.’ ‘This is madness, Maggie. Put the knife down.’ Fry’s voice faltered as Maggie’s expression hit her like a bucket of freezing water. Though the sun that reached them through the high windows was weak and cold, its light was enough to change Maggie’s face. It clearly picked out the ragged edges of the scar tissue that ran across her cheek and into her hairline. The scar had flared angrily, marking her face like a fresh brand. Suddenly, Fry realized she was trapped in the narrow passage. They were alone among the rusted iron gates and the nervous cattle. The knife in Maggie’s hand had a bright steel blade and a black hilt. Fry could see every detail of it - the markings on the handle, the narrow groove to channel the blood. Maggie held the knife out towards her, as if offering a treat for her to share. ‘We were going to use them to slash their tyres,’ she said. She smiled then - the first time that Fry had seen Maggie smile properly. But the corner of her damaged eye puckered and twisted her smile into a dreadful, ironic wink. ‘Ros would have been pleased.’ ‘Do you mean Ros Daniels?’

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  ‘Yes, Ros,’ said Maggie. ‘You knew about Jenny Weston too.’

  Her grip tightened on the knife. Fry tensed, and her hand began to creep towards her scabbard, where the solid weight of her ASP sat, the foam grip protruding slightly, ready for her fingers to grasp.

  ‘When I was talking about Jenny Weston, it was because I wanted to make her a real person to you,’ she said. ‘Not just another victim.’

  ‘Oh, Jenny Weston was a real person to me,’ said Maggie. ‘But there was one thing you didn’t tell me about her. Was she my daughter’s lover?’

  ‘Your daughter?’ ‘Yes - my daughter!’

  Maggie’s shout reverberated around the tightly packed pens. The calves shrieked and scattered, crushing each other against the furthest corners of their steel cages. Fry’s hand slipped down to her scabbard. The handle of the ASP dropped into her palm and she flicked her wrist. With a hiss and a click of the ratchet, sixteen inches of steel baton suddenly shone in the artificial lights.

  ‘Stay back.’

  Maggie grew calm again immediately. ‘Do you think you need that?’ she said. ‘You’re the great unarmed combat expert, aren’t you?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re not the only one with a file. The details of a police officer’s history are well recorded. Everything is available, if you have the right contacts.’

  Maggie advanced, and Fry retreated, trying to keep

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  more than an arm’s length between them. Her instructors had always said the same thing - in a knife fight, you first had to accept that you might not avoid getting cut.

  She backed up against a gate and turned too quickly to keep her balance. She felt her ankle twist and pain shoot up her leg. Her foot went numb, and for a moment she lost control of her right leg and had to drag it with her round the corner of the pen. Maggie kept advancing, walking steadily, until she had backed Fry beyond the occupied pens towards the empty fatstock ring, away from the noise and the crowd. Fry risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that she was reversing into the end of the passage. Behind her was the gate into the ring. She briefly considered taking a stand and relying on the chance of deflecting the knife with her baton. But realistically, she knew that her best hope was to gain time until support arrived.

  In a ceremonial kata, with two opponents equally matched and wary, you had to watch for the opportunity, the first opening that would enable a strike. Movements became rhythmic and formal, just as they did now. But for Fry, the first opening she allowed could be her last. She had to watch the knife, refuse to be distracted by Maggie’s eyes. She had to keep Maggie talking.

  ‘Maggie, put the knife down.’

  ‘You can’t tell me anything about memories either, Diane,’ said Maggie. ‘I know what memories are. I know now that Ros is dead.’

  ‘But how did she die, Maggie?’

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  Maggie lashed out suddenly with the knife, a casual sideways stroke without even looking where she was aiming. The blade sliced through the side of one of the plastic barrels as if it had been paper. A sweet, sickly smell filled the passage. Fry glanced at the tear in the plastic for only a second before she recognized the attempt at distraction, and then she quickly met Maggie’s eye again. Fry remembered her ‘CUT’ technique. Create distance. Use cover. Transmit and ask for assistance. She had to watch her assailant’s hands; stay alert, state red. Expect to get cut. She felt behind her with her left hand for the sliding handle of the door. She pulled it open quickly and slipped through the gap. Maggie feinted suddenly with the knife, and Fry jumped backwards, stumbled as her ankle sent another jolt of agony through her. Now they were in the auction ring itself. They moved from side to side, back and forth, maneuvering for advantage, reluctant to get too close, their movements mirroring each other’s. Fry began to imagine that Maggie was mimicking her, dragging one leg as she moved. The first lights of approaching police vehicles flickered through the wooden slats in the walls, bouncing their colours against the ceiling lights and the pen sides. They distorted shapes in the auction ring and created dozens of new shadows that cascaded through the tiers of seats. It was almost as if there was an entire crowd up there, waving, stamping their feet, cheering, ready to give the thumbs down to the defeated. Fry cursed herself silently. It was always the case

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  that you weren’t wearing your stab-proof vest when you needed it. The heavy vest hindered her movement, and she had left it off. Uniform
ed officers had a sidehandled baton, a much better weapon against a knife attack. An ASP was more easily concealed, but it was an attacking weapon, not designed for defence against a knife. If Fry had been in uniform, she would have been better equipped. But now she was aware of the thinness of her jacket, a flimsy layer of fabric that provided no protection at all from a blade. She felt as though her chest and abdomen were exposed and vulnerable. She was also aware of her bare hands, the left held out, palm facing Maggie, the classic defensive gesture taught in the personal safety handbooks. She imagined her palm being cut, the tendons of her fingers severed. ‘It’s so ironic, Diane,’ said Maggie. ‘Because I think that you were looking for someone, too. The search can take you to some strange places, can’t it?’ They stared at each other - Maggie cool, Fry becoming more angry. ‘Who is she, Diane?’ said Maggie. ‘Who is the woman you’re looking for?’ ‘None of your business.’ Fry lunged forward and struck with her ASP at Maggie’s knife hand. But in that moment of anger, she had made her mistake - she had forgotten her injured leg. Her knee threw her off balance, enough for Maggie to jerk her arm out of the way and let the baton hiss harmlessly past her wrist. Before she could right herself again, Fry glimpsed a flicker of steel as the knife came

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  towards her. She closed her eyes just one second before the point of the blade carved open her skin.

  Ben Cooper ran along the auctioneer’s walkway, distracted by the clanging gates and the movement of the cattle. He looked around, saw only rows of pens, inquisitive bovine faces, damp concrete and cold streaks of light from the broken roof. He could see no sign of Diane Fry. All he knew was that his slowness had put her in danger.

  Outside, DI Hitchens would be organizing the troops as paramedics arrived to take over the task of battling for Todd Weenink’s life. But for Cooper, there was no time for waiting.