Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue

Helen could see a constable in shirt sleeves standing by the field gate between the caravan and the woods. His face was turned up to the hill, and now and then he put a hand up to shade his eyes as he squinted into the sun. He was watching Harry.

‘They know you’re here,’ said Helen.

‘And they don’t like it either, but there’s bugger-all they can do about it. It’s a public footpath, and I’m not anywhere near their precious tape.’

‘Have they said anything?’

‘Oh aye, they sent some bugger up to talk to me half an hour ago. He wanted to know who I was and what I was doing here. Then he took my name and wrote it down in a little book. He knew who I was then, all right. I thought he was going to ask for my autograph. I’ve never been so famous. You’d think I was somebody off telly.’

‘Did the policeman ask you to move?’

‘He did.’

‘And what did you say?’

A gleam of amusement came to Harry’s eye. Helen sighed.

‘Oh, Granddad. You shouldn’t. It doesn’t do to upset them.’

‘Bugger that. Somebody has to keep them on their toes.’

Looking at her grandfather, Helen wondered whether she had been right to come. She had been into school for a pre-term staff meeting, but had been given permission by her head to leave early. She had made use of the time to make a mad rush across the countryside to check on her grandparents. She had found Gwen subdued but calm, and Harry missing. Now she had tracked him down, he did not seem like the Harry she knew. Even more than on the previous day, he gave the impression that in some way he was enjoying himself. But she knew her grandfather was not a cruel or callous man. He would not revel in the death of a young girl. But somehow he saw the event as a challenge of his own he had to face. Perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t come at all. She did not want to end up in an argument with him.

‘Have you seen the newspapers?’ asked Harry.

‘Some of them.’

‘A lot of rubbish, they print,’ he complained. ‘Two of them have spelled my name wrong.’

‘I suppose there’ll be more in the local papers.’

‘They’re not out until later in the week. It might be over by then.’

‘Do you think so, Granddad?’

Harry had his pipe in his mouth, his jaw clamped into a habitual grimace. Helen couldn’t read his expression at all. She wondered what had happened to the rapport she had always had with him, the sense of knowing what he was thinking without him having to say it out loud. Her understanding of him seemed to have died. It was dead since yesterday.

‘Maybe it will,’ he said. He puffed at his pipe as if giving the question some thought. ‘If the coppers pull their fingers out. Or even if they don’t. Maybe it will be over all the same.’

‘It says in the paper they’re trying to trace the Sherratt boy.’

He snorted. ‘Much good that youth will do them.’

‘He’s disappeared. I suppose it looks suspicious.’

‘He was never going to last long at the Mount,’ said Harry. ‘Not him. I can’t think what made them take him on.’

‘According to Dad, Graham Vernon said he wanted to give him a chance.’

‘Oh aye, him,’ said Harry. ‘He’d give anything a chance. He’d give the devil a chance to sing in the chapel choir.’

‘It looks as though he might have been wrong this time.’

Harry took his pipe from his mouth and tapped it against the boulder.

‘I tell you what, lass. He was wrong, all right. He’s been wrong all his life.’

‘I know you don’t like him …’

‘Like him! If it were left to me –’

‘I know, I know. Don’t let’s go over it all again, please.’

‘Well. You’re right. It doesn’t need saying over again.’

The silence stretched into minutes. Helen had never felt uncomfortable with silence between them before. Now, though, it was different. She had no idea what Harry was thinking. She moved her shoulders, easing her bra straps where her skin was tender from spending too long in the sun the day before.

‘I think I’ll walk Jess on a bit further,’ said Harry. ‘It’ll give that lad’s eyes a rest.’

‘Granddad. Don’t get into trouble, will you?’

He pulled himself upright, regarding her with dignity. ‘Me? Don’t you know me, lass? I’m a match for any of that lot.’

She watched him tug at Jess’s lead, flexing his stiff legs and straightening his jacket. The toecaps of his boots gleamed so brightly they were dazzling. For a moment, Helen caught a glimpse of herself, distorted and blackened, turned upside down on the toes of her grandfather’s boots. She had never known anyone else with such innate dignity and self-control. If occasionally he said things that shocked people, it was only because he believed it was right that you should say what you thought, and because he didn’t really care what people thought of him. His pride in himself made her feel proud of him too, and she felt her eyes fill as he moved slowly away.

‘I’ll see you later then,’ she said.

‘No doubt.’

After a last glance at the police activity down the hill, Helen walked back to Dial Cottage to see her grandmother. She was surprised to find her father standing in the hall, hovering between the doorways to the front and back rooms as if he had forgotten where he wanted to be. He was dressed for the office, in a dark suit with a grey pinstripe, a white shirt and a tie in red and grey diagonal stripes.

‘Dad?’

‘Hello, love. I was in the area and just called in to see how Gwen and Harry were managing after yesterday. We’ve got to look after them when they’ve had such a shock, haven’t we?’

‘That’s right. It was a shock,’ said Gwen. She was in her chair in the back room, toying with a piece of knitting. It was shaping up into a long-sleeved cardigan made from bright-pink wool, and Helen had a horrible feeling she knew who it was intended for. But at the moment, her grandmother’s fingers were moving the needles without making any impression on the wool, as if she had to be doing something with her hands.

‘Granddad’s out there with Jess, watching the police.’

‘He’s better off out there,’ Gwen said. ‘At least he’s not under my feet.’

‘What are the police doing? Have they been here again? Have they been … digging or anything?’

‘Digging?’ Helen looked at her father in astonishment, wondering why he didn’t come further into the room. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and she smiled at his old-fashioned reluctance to go without his suit jacket even in such heat. ‘Why should they be digging, Dad?’

‘I don’t know. That’s the sort of thing they do, isn’t it? Digging people’s gardens up, and all that.’

‘Looking for what?’