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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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Helen Milner had done some shopping for her grandmother the night before at Somerfield’s in Edendale. Things were much cheaper there than in the little village shop. Normally Gwen would be willing to catch the Hulley’s bus from the stop near the pub for the journey into town for the sake of the money she would save from her pension. But this week she had refused to do the journey, worrying about what the other women would say to her on the bus, believing that the shop assistants would talk about her behind her back, that the checkout girls would refuse to serve her. Nothing Helen could say would persuade her she was imagining things. At times, she could be just as stubborn as Harry.

      ‘He was the gardener at the Mount, but Graham Vernon sacked him,’ she said.

      ‘Lee Sherratt? He was never a gardener. He can hump a wheelbarrow, but he knows nothing.’

      ‘They say he had a fancy for Laura.’

      ‘That’s as maybe. It means nowt.’

      Helen slotted tins of peas and new potatoes into the kitchen cupboards, glancing sideways out of the window, where she could see Gwen pottering in the garden, carefully deadheading roses with a pair of secateurs. She looked frail and unsteady on her feet, her skin translucent in the morning light angling from above Win Low.

      ‘Have you talked to Grandma yet?’

      Harry was deep in his morning paper. Unlike many of the men his age, who preferred the sports coverage and sensational headlines of the tabloids, Harry took the Guardian. He said he liked to know what was really going on in the world. ‘All this stuff about TV celebrities and royal hangers-on. That means nowt to me,’ he would say.

      ‘What should I talk to her about, then?’

      ‘She’s upset.’

      ‘When isn’t she? The woman’s got neurotic in her old age.’

      ‘Granddad, she’s very worried. She thinks you’re in trouble with the police. You have to reassure her. She won’t listen to anyone else.’

      ‘Ah, they’re all talking about me, aren’t they?’ said Harry.

      ‘They’ll talk. But nobody believes you’re involved.’

      ‘Why not, then?’ he demanded.

      Helen waved her hand, stumped for an explanation when challenged. ‘Well –’

      ‘Aye, I know. It’s because I’m old. You’re just like them coppers. They haven’t questioned me, you know. Not properly, not like they ought to have done, seeing as I found the body. They think I can’t have done it, you see. Because I’m old. Well, they’re wrong, and you’re wrong too.’

      ‘Don’t be silly, Granddad. We know you didn’t do it. Obviously.’

      ‘Oh aye. Obviously.’

      ‘Grandma knows. And Mum and Dad and me, we know that you’ve done nothing wrong. We would know – we’re your family.’

      ‘And that’s it? Just the few of you and no more?’

      Helen felt a chill at his dismissive tone. ‘Your family has always meant a lot to you. You know it has.’

      Harry sighed and folded his paper.

      ‘Well, hasn’t it?’

      ‘Of course it has, lass. But there are other things as strong as family. Stronger even. Women can’t see it, because they’re made different – family, that’s everything for them. But there are other things. Friendship. When you’ve had a bloke at your back that you trust with your life, and he trusts you the same, that’s different. That’s a bond you can’t break, not for anybody. You get so as you would do anything not to betray that trust, lass. Anything.’

      Harry was looking Helen in the face, a look deep in his eye that was almost appealing, asking for her help. And she did want to help him, but she didn’t know how to. She waited for Harry to explain what he meant.

      But he stared at the front page of the newspaper, where a picture of Central African refugees with desperate eyes stared back at him.

      ‘You’d kill to help that sort of friend,’ he said.

      

      Ben Cooper sighted along the barrels, shifted his grip on the wooden stock and breathed in the scent of the gun oil as his fingers felt gently for the trigger. The shotgun fitted snugly into his shoulder, and the weight of the double barrels swung smoothly as he turned his body to test their balance. With that effortless movement came an eagerness to see the target in his sights, a desire for the kick and cough of the cartridge. He was ready.

      ‘Pull!’

      The trap snapped and a clay flashed across his line of vision. As if of their own accord, the barrels swung up and to the right to follow its trajectory, and his finger squeezed. The clay shattered into fragments that curved towards the ground.

      ‘Pull!’

      The second clay flickered overhead. Cooper carefully increased the pressure on the trigger, timing the extra squeeze as the target’s line steadied and the clay shattered like the first.

      ‘What do you think of it, Ben?’

      ‘Nice,’ he said, lowering the shotgun and breaking it open. He laid the gun across the bonnet of the Land Rover, and his brother walked across from the trap gun they used for practising. Matt was six years older than Ben, with the barrel chest and well-muscled shoulders and torso of a working farmer. He had the same fine light-brown hair and chose to hide his receding hairline under a green tractor driver’s cap with a long peak like a baseball cap and the words ‘John Deere’ on the front.

      ‘Those were two good shots, Ben. Who were you picturing when you hit the clays?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘From the expression on your face, you had someone you really hate in your sights. Did it help to let it out?’

      ‘Yes, a bit.’

      Matt studied his younger brother. ‘It’s really getting you down, isn’t it? We don’t often see you like this. We will get Mum sorted out, you know. Wait till you see her this afternoon – I bet she’ll be more like her old self, and you’ll feel a whole lot better about it.’

      ‘Maybe, Matt. But it isn’t only that.’

      ‘Oh. Woman trouble, by any chance? Not Helen Milner, is it?’

      Cooper stared at his brother in amazement. ‘What makes you say that?’

      ‘It’s obvious you must have bumped into her on this Vernon case. I put two and two together when I read about it in the paper. Her dad works for Graham Vernon, doesn’t he? And the old man, Harry Dickinson – that would be her grandfather, right? If you’ve been hanging around there, I guessed you must have renewed old acquaintances.’

      Matt grinned as his brother looked at him, lost for words. ‘What do you reckon, then? Should I have been a detective?’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ