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

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       13

      Cooper screwed up his face, bared his teeth and let the power surge through his muscles. He glared at the ball, swung back his arm and released a ferocious serve that flew off the front wall like a rocket and hit the back corner so fast that Fry hardly had time to move.

      ‘Thirteen-three.’

      They changed sides of the court, passing each other near the ‘T’. Cooper refused to meet Fry’s eye. He was completely absorbed in his game, as he had been since the start. His concentration was total, and Fry felt she might as well have been a robot set up for him to aim at. As they passed, she smelled the sweat on his body like the sweet resin of a damaged pine tree.

      ‘Your serve’s incredible.’

      Cooper nodded briefly, lining up the ball with his left side turned to the front wall. He waited a few seconds for Fry to get in position, then, with a grunt, unleashed a cannonball that bounced straight at his opponent’s face, making her instinctively want to get out of the way, rather than try to hit it back. Returning Cooper’s serve was proving a futile exercise anyway.

      ‘Fourteen-three. Game point.’

      Fry had given up trying to make conversation during the game. Her comments brought no response, other than another crushing serve. Those that she managed to return resulted in an exhausting rally, during which she ran herself ragged backwards and forwards across the court, while Ben Cooper kept control of the ‘T’. He would thrash the ball time and again against the front wall, now just above the tin, now curving high into the air over her racquet. She could see that her arms and legs had turned lobster-red with the exertion, and the perspiration was trickling past her sweat band to run down the sides of her face and soaking into the elastic of her sports bra between her breasts.

      Cooper served again, and she managed to get her racquet under the ball, lobbing it towards the near corner. He darted across court and collected the shot with ease, ready to bounce his return to the far side. Fry stretched to reach it, ducking low and hitting the ball straight and hard back along the side wall. Glad to have made a return, she spun round, almost off balance, in an effort to get back to the ‘T’, and collided with Cooper on his way to return the shot. Their racquets clashed and their hot limbs tangled sweatily for a moment before they could separate themselves. Fry breathed hard and rubbed her knee where she had knocked it against some part of Cooper’s body that felt like rock.

      ‘Obstruction,’ he said.

      She nodded. ‘OK. Game, then.’

      ‘And match. Unless you want to play three out of five.’

      ‘Oh no. I think I’d be safer conceding.’

      ‘Whatever.’

      Cooper collected the ball. For the first time, a small smile touched his lips.

      ‘I win, then. Thanks for the game.’

      ‘I’d say it was a pleasure, Ben, except that you play like a machine.’

      ‘I take that as a compliment from you.’

      ‘I’m absolutely wrecked.’

      Cooper shrugged. ‘You tried hard.’

      At another time, Fry might have found his tone a bit patronizing and reacted quite differently. But just now she was in placatory mood. She tucked her racquet under her arm and held out a hand.

      ‘Shake, then.’

      Cooper looked at her, surprised, but shook automatically. His hand felt as hot as her own, and their perspiration mingled in their palms as their swollen fingers fumbled clumsily at each other. Fry held on to his hand when he tried to pull it away again.

      ‘Ben – I’m sorry,’ she said.

      ‘What for? Playing so badly?’

      ‘For the things I said about your father today. I didn’t know.’

      ‘I know you didn’t,’ he said. She felt the muscles in his forearm tense. The beginnings of a smile had vanished again, and his face was set, revealing no emotion. She saw a trickle of sweat run through his fair eyebrows and into his eyes. He blinked away the moisture, breaking her stare, and she let his hand go.

      ‘DI Hitchens told me tonight. He sent me to look at the plaque in reception at the station. Your father was killed arresting a mugger, wasn’t he? He was a hero.’

      Cooper seemed to study the squash ball, turning it over in his hand to find the coloured spot and squeezing against the warm air trapped inside.

      ‘It wasn’t the mugger who killed him. A gang of youths were standing around outside a pub, and they joined in to try to get the mugger free. It was them who killed him. There were too many of them. They got him on the ground and kicked him to death.’

      ‘And what happened to them?’

      ‘Nothing much,’ he said. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts to wipe his eyes and his forehead. ‘Oh, they found out who they were, all right. There was a big enough outcry about it in Edendale. But there were seven or eight of them, all telling different stories when it came to court, with the usual set of defence solicitors looking for the get-outs. It could never be proved which ones actually kicked my father in the head. I mostly remember that it came СКАЧАТЬ