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

‘Maybe there are times when you don’t know where your husband is, but Graham Vernon does know.’

‘Of course.’

‘And sometimes, perhaps, it’s Charlotte Vernon who knows where he is?’

For a moment, Margaret did nothing but stare at the simmering kettle as if it had muttered a rude word. Then she opened her mouth and eyes wide and began to flap her fingers. ‘Oh no, what do you mean?’

‘I think it’s fairly straightforward. Mrs Vernon was quite open about it.’

‘Was she implying something about Andrew? It’s quite ridiculous, isn’t it? She’s obviously not well. She must have been affected very badly for her to make up things like that.’

‘You don’t think it’s true?’

‘True? What nonsense! Andrew? Nonsense!’

‘You realize that the wife is often the last to know?’

‘Oh, but really … Andrew?’ She laughed suddenly, foolishly. ‘It’s just not possible.’

‘OK.’ The kettle began to boil, but was ignored. A small cloud of steam drifted across the kitchen, but dissipated before it could warm Fry’s chilled hands. ‘One last detail, Mrs Milner. Are you related to a boy called Simeon Holmes?’

‘Simeon is my cousin Alison’s son. They live on the Devonshire Estate.’

‘Were you aware that he was Laura Vernon’s boyfriend?’

Margaret wrung her hands and stared out of the bay window. ‘Not until Alison told me last night. She said he had to go to the police station.’

‘Something else you didn’t know, then?’

‘No, no,’ cried Margaret. ‘Not Andrew. It’s impossible!’

Fry trod in the slithery skin of geranium petals as she left the house. Though still scarlet on the surface, they were black and rotting underneath. Impossible? The only thing that was impossible was the idea that she might have been willing to sit and take tea with Margaret Milner among her miniature cottages and net curtains.

While she turned the Peugeot round, Fry thought of one more place to try. This one would be a pleasure, she thought, as she remembered the way Helen Milner had looked at Ben Cooper in the street at Moorhay.

Helen took a phone call from her mother as soon as Diane Fry had left the house in Edendale, and she had to spend some minutes placating her. When she had finally hung up, Helen rang her grandparents’ number. She knew they didn’t use the telephone much, and had only been persuaded to have it put in for emergencies, with Andrew paying the rental. When it rang, she could picture the two old people looking at the phone in alarm, reluctant to answer it. Eventually, Harry would get up slowly and take hold of the handset, answering the telephone being a man’s job.

‘Granddad, it’s Helen.’

‘Helen, what’s up, love?’

‘It’s the police, Granddad. They’ve been asking questions about Dad.’

‘Have they now? That pillock with the big words, or the nasty piece of work that was with him?’

‘Neither.’

‘Was it –?’

‘No, it was the woman. Detective Constable Fry.’

‘Her? She’s nothing but a bit of a lass.’

‘Even so …’

Harry paused, considering. ‘Aye, you’re right. Best to know.’

Diane Fry found Helen Milner’s cottage to be one of four tiny homes created out of a barn conversion.

The barn had a wavy roof and there was a clutter of old farm buildings at the back that no one had yet found a way of using. Inside, the walls were of undressed stone, with casement windows and pitch-covered beams. Most of the furniture was second-hand stripped pine, with wicker chairs and a rush mat on the kitchen floor.

Helen greeted her without any indication of surprise, and Fry guessed that the phone lines had been busy during her journey across Edendale. She expected this third member of the Milner family to be as unforthcoming as the others, to tell the same story of shock and ignorance, to use the same, familiar words of outraged innocence.

But she was amazed how long the visit lasted. And she was fascinated and enlightened by the story that Helen Milner had to tell her over the instant coffee in the hand-thrown pottery mugs. By the second coffee, Fry had almost forgotten what she had come for.

22 (#ulink_5da50d38-8be5-52ba-9dc4-d0a719047a69)

The three old men had met at Moorhay post office, where they had collected their pensions. The post office had been busy, not just with the regular Thursday pension queue, but with hikers emptying the cold drinks cabinet and the little freezer where the choc ices and the strawberry-flavoured iced lollies were kept. There was barely room inside the shop to manoeuvre round the displays of postcards of Ladybower Reservoir and Chatsworth House. Bulging rucksacks were piled outside while their owners flicked through the guidebooks and the sets of National Park place mats.

Soon the hikers would be moving on through the village to the tea rooms and craft centre at the Old Mill, or the picnic site at Quith Holes; then they would head for the Eden Valley Trail, aiming to reach the Limestone Way to the south or the Pennine Way to the north. Within half an hour, they would have forgotten Moorhay.

Harry Dickinson had picked a small frozen chicken out of the freezer for Gwen. It was solid and heavy in his hand, and the frost bit painfully into his palm, numbing his fingers. But queueing at the counter to pay for it, he found himself marooned in a sea of young people, who bumped against him and elbowed him carelessly in the ribs. They seemed regardless of his presence, as if he was just another obstacle that had come between their grasping hands and the next Diet Coke.

A small vein began to throb in Harry’s temple as a girl pushed in front of him in the queue. She was wearing a crop top that left her midriff bare and striped leggings that made her hips and backside look enormous. Her dyed blonde hair exploded from the top of her head like badly baled straw, and when she opened her mouth to call to her friends, he saw a silver stud thrust through her tongue.

Jostling for position, she trod hard on Harry’s toes with her Doc Marten’s, and when he looked down there were dirty scuff marks and indentations in the shiny leather of his boots. If she had apologized, he would never have said anything. But she turned away without even seeing him. She might as well have trodden on a piece of litter that she could wipe off later.

Harry tapped the girl on the shoulder, and she stared up at him incredulously. Her lip turned back in a sneer, revealing a grey wad of chewing gum squashed between her teeth. He noticed there was a stud through her bare navel that matched the one in her tongue.

‘Haven’t you been taught any manners?’ he said.

She looked at him as if he was speaking a different language.

‘What’s up with you, granddad?’

Her accent was local, and Harry thought he might actually have seen her around the village before. It made no difference.

‘If you shove in front of me and tread on my feet, you might at least apologize.’

‘I’ve as much right to be in here as you.’

‘As much. But not more. You’ll have to learn, lass.’

‘Oh, get lost,’ she said. She pushed her chewing gum forward through her teeth so that it smeared across her lips. Then she wriggled out her tongue and dragged it all back into her mouth again, staring insolently at Harry. But she quickly lost interest in him and turned away as the queue moved forward.

Harry hefted the solid weight of the frozen chicken in his left hand, staring at the back of the girl’s head. The tight breast of the chicken was smooth and hard, and coated in a thick layer of ice. He grasped the legs of the bird and let it begin to swing.

The girl screamed and cannoned forward into a youth in front of her in the queue. Everyone in the post office turned to look as she snarled and cursed at the old man. She was rubbing the place on her back where the biting cold of the chicken had touched her warm, naked flesh like a branding iron.