‘I’ve seen your record, of course,’ said Hitchens. ‘It’s not bad.’
Fry nodded. She knew it wasn’t bad. It was damn good. Her exam results had been in the top few per cent all along the line. Her clear-up rate since her transfer to CID had been outstanding. She had had a good career lined up in the West Midlands, and they had been grooming her for big things; anybody could see that.
‘It was a pity you had to leave your old force,’ said Hitchens.
She said nothing, waiting for the comment that she knew would have to come.
‘But it was understandable. In the circumstances.’
‘Yes, sir.’
In the circumstances. That was exactly how Fry herself tried to think of it now. ‘The circumstances’. It was a wonderfully cool and objective phrase. Circumstances were what other people had, not something that turned your life upside down, destroyed your self-esteem and threatened to ruin everything you had ever held as worthwhile. You couldn’t get upset about circumstances. You could just get on with life and concentrate on more important things. In the circumstances.
They were driving along a ridge now, with a steep drop on one side down rock-strewn slopes to a little river. Gradually the view became more and more obscured by trees. Here and there was a house set back from the road, not all of them working farms.
‘No ill effects though?’ said Hitchens.
Fry couldn’t really blame him for fishing. She had expected it sooner or later. The subject had been raised at her interview, of course, and she had answered all the carefully worded questions with the proper responses, very reasonable and unemotional. But it was bound to be in the minds of those, like DI Hitchens, that she had to rely on for her prospects of advancement. It was just another hurdle she had to get over.
‘None at all,’ she said. ‘It’s all behind me now. I don’t think about it. I just want to get on with the business in hand.’
‘One of the hazards of the job, eh? Goes with the territory?’
‘I suppose you might say that, sir.’
He nodded, satisfied. For a brief moment, Fry wondered how he would react if she did what a tight little angry knot deep inside her really wanted to do – screamed, shouted, lashed out with her fists to wipe the smug smile off his face. She was proud that she no longer did that; she had learned to keep the knot of anger tied up tight and secure.
The houses suddenly grew thicker on either side of the road, though there had been no sign to indicate they were reaching a village. There was a small school off to the right, some farm buildings converted into craft workshops and a tiny village post office and store in an end terrace cottage. The square tower of a church appeared over the rooftops, surrounded by tall, mature chestnut trees and sycamores.
They found a cluster of cars and vans parked in a gravel layby. As soon as Hitchens pulled up, a sweating PC Wragg appeared at the window of the car. He was clutching a polythene bag containing a Reebok trainer.
‘Wragg? Where’s DC Cooper?’
‘The old bloke’s showing him where he found it, sir.’
‘What’s he playing at? He should have waited,’ said Hitchens.
‘The old bloke wouldn’t wait. He said it was dominoes night, and it was now or never.’
‘Dominoes night?’
Wragg looked embarrassed. ‘He really seemed to mean it,’ he said.
The section of footpath looked much the same as any other. It had a dry bed of dusty soil, embedded with twisted tree roots that broke through the surface to form steps in the steeper places. There were oaks and birches clinging to the slopes on either side, with swathes of dense bracken clustering round their trunks. A tumble of huge rocks lay half hidden among the bracken, like the overgrown ruins of a Stone Age temple. Birds skittered away among the undergrowth, chattering their alarm calls, and there was the constant background hiss of a fast-running stream.
‘Aye, about here,’ said Harry.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I reckon.’
Ben Cooper didn’t quite know what to make of Harry Dickinson. Usually he could read some emotion in people he came into contact with in this sort of job. They were often upset, frightened, angry or even completely knocked for six by shock and distress. These were the ones for whom violent crime was something new and horrific that had never touched their lives before. Sometimes there were those who were nervous, or became unreasonably aggressive. Those were interesting reactions, too, often the first signs of guilt. He had learned to pick up those signs in the people he dealt with. He thought of it as a good detective’s instinct.
Harry Dickinson, though, had showed no emotion of any kind, not when he had been in the cottage with his wife and granddaughter, and not now when he stood with Cooper at the spot where he and his dog had found the bloodstained trainer.
During the walk down the path to the foot of Raven’s Side, Harry had marched ahead, silent and stiff, his back pulled straight, his arms swinging in a steady rhythm. He had not spoken a word since they had left the cottage, communicating only with a slight tilt of the head when they reached a turning in the path. It was as if the old man was shut up tight in a body that had turned to wood. Cooper would have liked to have got in front of him, to try to read something in the old man’s eyes.
‘You do realize that Laura Vernon might be lying nearby badly injured, Mr Dickinson?’
‘Yes.’
‘Or even dead?’
Harry met Cooper’s eyes. What was the expression that passed across them so fleetingly? Amusement? No, mockery. An impatience with such a waste of words.
‘I’m not daft. I know what’s what.’
‘It’s vital that we know the exact spot you found the trainer, Mr Dickinson.’
Harry spat into the grass, narrowed his eyes against the low sun, like an Indian picking up a trail. He pointed the peak of his cap to the right.
‘Down there? Near the stream?’
‘Jess runs down there, by the water,’ said Harry.
‘What’s past those rocks?’
‘A wild bit, all overgrown. There’s rabbits and such in there.’
‘Is that where the trainer came from?’
Harry shrugged. ‘Take a look for yourself, lad.’
Cooper walked over to the outcrop of rocks. Only their tops protruded from the grass, and their jagged shapes looked slippery and treacherous. It was not a place he would choose to walk over, given the choice of easier walking that lay in other directions. He could see that sheep must graze here, by the shortness of the coarse grass. Between the rocks, narrow tracks had been worn, and there were ancient black pellets drying on the ground.
Trying to stick to the rocks to avoid confusing any traces of footprints, Cooper clambered over into the thick undergrowth. The stream rushed over the rocks a few feet to his right, running low just here below a stretch of smooth, grassy bank. It looked like an ideal spot for two people to spend an afternoon, secluded and undisturbed.
He looked back over his shoulder. Harry Dickinson had not followed him. He stood on a flat section of rock, poised as if guarding the path, apparently oblivious to what was going on around him. His fist clenched occasionally, as if he felt that he ought to have his dog lead in his hand. He looked completely calm.
Cooper moved further into the undergrowth, his clothes brushing against the bracken and catching on the straggling tendrils