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

‘Mmm. Did you get her to expand on that?’

‘As far as I could. She said Laura was polite and knew how to behave. She said she was very good with the younger children, helping to show them what to do when they were learning to ride. Mrs Davis told me a story about Laura looking after a boy who had fallen off his horse. Apparently, she was the only one he would let comfort him when he had hurt himself. Mrs Davis said Laura’s mother was a nice woman too.’

Somebody snorted. DI Hitchens didn’t look impressed. ‘It doesn’t mean much.’

‘But they all seem to know of the Vernons, these people,’ said Fry. ‘Every one of them.’

‘Yes, and not too charmed by them either, on the whole,’ said Wragg.

‘It’s that sort of village, though.’

‘What do you mean, Diane?’ asked Hitchens.

‘They’re close, this lot. They don’t like newcomers, people who don’t fit in. I mean, they’re not exactly welcoming, are they?’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Cooper.

‘Well, you wouldn’t.’

‘It depends on how you approach them, that’s all. If you come to a village like this willing to fit in, they’ll accept you. But if you stay aloof, make it look as though you think you’re better than they are, then they’re bound to react against you.’

‘And the Vernons are like that, aloof, you reckon, Ben?’

‘Sure of it, sir.’

‘Hey, what about some sort of conspiracy against the Vernons? Local vigilantes, like, who get together and knock off Laura Vernon as a warning? Clear off out of our village, we don’t want you. That sort of thing.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish, Parkin.’

‘That sounds like something out of the Dark Ages,’ said Fry.

‘Or The X-Files,’ suggested Wragg.

‘All right, all right.’

‘Any positive reactions to the trainer?’ asked Hitchens.

‘Nothing.’

‘Some of the old biddies don’t even know what a trainer is.’

‘That trainer has to be somewhere.’

‘Sir, if it’s chummy from Buxton, the one B Division are after, then he’ll probably have taken it home with him as a memento, like they reckon he did with the tights off the other one.’

‘Yes, that’s possible, Wragg. But Mr Tailby doesn’t believe we can assume the two cases are linked at this stage.’

‘But that means we have to do everything from scratch, when they might turn out to be the same bloke after all.’

‘Have we turned up anything on the known offenders, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘Not yet. It’s early days. DI Armstrong is on to it.’

‘Well, she’s wasting her time anyway.’

‘Thanks for the benefit of your views, Parkin.’

Cooper saw that PC Parkin was watching Diane Fry carefully for her reactions. Fry only needed to make one ill-considered comment, let slip one unguarded reaction, and a report on her behaviour would be circulating round the division very quickly. A reputation among your colleagues could be made or broken on first impressions.

Sometimes, he knew, the worst thing of all was to inadvertently earn yourself some childish nickname, which you could then never live down, no matter how hard you tried.

‘We were lucky that the body was found so quickly really,’ said Hitchens. ‘It’s given us a head start. Sometimes we’re not so lucky. The old bloke with the dog did us a big favour.’

‘Have you been involved in any other enquiries like this, sir?’ asked Fry.

Hitchens told them about a murder enquiry in the late 1980s, when a teenage boy had gone missing from his foster home in Eyam. They had set up an incident room right in the centre of the village, linked to Divisional HQ. Over a period of months they had gradually spread the search over an area within a fivemile radius of Eyam. They had used the Mountain Rescue Team, Search Dog Teams, Cave Rescue Teams, the Peak Park Ranger Service, Derbyshire Countryside Rangers, even members of ramblers’ clubs and scores of other volunteers. They had put up Search and Rescue helicopters over the hills. But they had never found the boy.

‘A man walking his dog in just the right place would have been a godsend then,’ he said.

‘And there was that one in 1966, do you remember?’ said Parkin, turning to Diane Fry.

‘I wasn’t even around in 1966,’ said Fry. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Eh? Well, it’s only, what …’

‘Thirty-three years ago.’

‘So it was. Well, it’s in the history books anyway.’

‘1966? Let me guess – you’re talking about football. The World Cup? That’d be the only thing you know about, I suppose.’

‘Yeah. They had the trophy nicked, did you know that? The World Cup itself, the Jules Rimet Trophy. Before the finals.’

‘Did somebody leave it in their car or what?’

‘And you won’t believe this – but it was found by a dog. Chucked in a hedge bottom, it was. Wrapped in fish-and-chip paper.’

‘The dog?’

‘The trophy. It was wrapped in fish-and-chip paper.’

‘Pickles,’ said Cooper.

‘No, it was definitely fish and chips.’

‘The dog was called Pickles. It got introduced to all the players before the final.’

‘Surely you don’t remember it?’ said Fry.