Dancing With the Virgins. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ her neck to see what Tailby was looking at. Someone had been fly-tipping from the roadway. She could just make out tyre marks, and a heap of bulging black bin liners, some yellow plastic sheeting and a roll of carpet that had been heaved off the edge. The rubbish lay scattered on the slope like the debris of a plane crash.

      ‘Find out where the entrance to that quarry is,’ said Tailby. ‘And somebody will have to go down there. We need to find the rest of the clothes. Top priority.’

      Hitchens had to dodge as Tailby wheeled suddenly and strode back towards the stones, avoiding the lengths of blue tape twisted together between birch trees and metal stakes. In the centre of the circle, the pathologist, Mrs Van Doon, still crouched over the victim under makeshift lighting. Tailby’s face contorted. He seemed to find something outrageous and obscene in the posture of the body.

      ‘Where’s that tent?’ he called. ‘Get the tent over her before we have an audience.’

      He turned his back and walked on a few yards from the circle, where a single stone stood on its own. DI Hitchens trailed after him at a safe distance.

      ‘There’s an inscription carved on this stone,’ announced Tailby, with the air of Moses coming down from the mountain.

      ‘Yes. It looks like a name, sir.’

      ‘We’ll need a photographer over here. I want that name deciphering.’

      ‘It’s well away from the path,’ said Hitchens. ‘We think the assailant probably brought his victim from the other direction.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘The inscription has probably been there for years.’

      ‘Do you know that? Are you familiar with these stones?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘Ever seen them before in your life?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      Tailby turned. ‘No point asking you, Fry, is there?’

      Fry shrugged, but the DCI wasn’t waiting for an answer. He looked around to see who else he could find. ‘You lot, there! Anyone seen these stones before? They’re a famous landmark, they tell me. A significant part of our ancient heritage. They’re an attraction. Visitors flock to see them. What about you?’

      The officers shook their heads. They were the sort of men who spent their free time in the pub or in front of the telly, doing a bit of DIY or visiting the garden centre. The ones with kids went to Alton Towers and Gulliver’s Kingdom. But this thing in front of them wasn’t a theme park. There were no white-knuckle rides or ice-cream vans. Tailby turned back to Hitchens.

      ‘OK, see? We know nothing about it. We’re all as ignorant as a lot of monkeys. This stone circle might as well be a Tibetan yak compound, for all we know about the place.’

      ‘Yes, but –’

      ‘Just see that it’s done,’ snarled Tailby.

      Then the DCI looked back to where Mrs Van Doon was working. Fry could see that more inscriptions had been scratched into the dirt in the centre of the circle, close to the body. The letters were big and bold, and they spelled out ‘STRIDE’. Whoever had made these was less interested in leaving a long-term record of his presence, though. The drizzle was hardly touching the marks, but a couple of heavy showers would wash them clean away.

      ‘What about those, then?’ said Tailby. ‘You’re not going to tell me those have been there for years?’

      ‘No,’ admitted Hitchens. ‘They’ve got to be more recent.’

      ‘When did it rain in this area last? Properly, I mean?’

      Tailby stared around him. The officers gathered nearby looked at each other, then up at the sky. Fry sympathized. They were detectives – they spent all their time buried in paperwork or making phone calls in windowless offices; occasionally they drove around in a car, shuttling from pub to crown court and back again. How were they supposed to know when it had rained?

      It was well known that DI Hitchens had just bought a new house in Chesterfield. Tailby himself had a ranch-style bungalow in a desirable part of Dronfield. Most of the other officers lived miles away, down in the lower valleys and the dormitory villages. Some of them were from the suburbs of Derby. It could be blowing a blizzard up here on the moor, piling up six-foot drifts of virgin snow, and all these men would see was a faint bit of sleet in the condensation on their kitchen windows.

      ‘Does it matter?’ said Hitchens.

      Tailby smiled like a fox with a rabbit. ‘It matters, Inspector, because we can’t say whether the inscriptions were written in the last twenty-four hours or the last two weeks.’

      ‘I suppose so, sir.’

      Teeth bared, Tailby glared round for another victim. There was a shuffling and looking away, a lot of thoughtful glances at the grey blanket of cloud.

      ‘You useless set of pillocks! Doesn’t anyone know? Then find me someone who does!’

      Mark Roper finally opened his eyes as Owen Fox parked the Land Rover behind the Partridge Cross briefing centre. The cycle hire staff had closed up for the night, but there were still a few visitors’ cars left outside. A couple were securing their bikes to a rack. It occurred to Mark Roper that one of the cars that still stood dark and unattended probably belonged to the woman whose body lay on the moor.

      ‘Come on, Mark. Let’s get you inside,’ said Owen.

      For a moment, Mark didn’t move. Then, slowly, he unfolded his legs and got out. He felt stiff, like an old man with arthritis. His jacket was crumpled, there were grass stains on his knees and black marks on his hands. He couldn’t think where the marks had come from, but his hands felt unpleasant and greasy, as if there was something on his skin that would take a long time to remove.

      He swayed and supported himself on the side of the Land Rover. Owen moved nearer, not touching him but hovering anxiously.

      ‘We have to wait while the police come to speak to you, Mark,’ he said.

      ‘I know.’

      ‘Are you up to it?’

      ‘I’m all right.’

      Owen Fox was a large man, a little ungainly from carrying too much weight around his upper body. His curly hair and wiry beard were going grey, and his face was worn and creased, the sign of a man who spent his life outdoors, regardless of the weather. Mark wanted to draw reassurance from his presence, to lean on his comforting bulk, but an uncertainty held him back.

      Owen finally took Mark by the arm. But the reassurance failed to come. The contact was safe and impersonal, Owen’s fingers meeting only the fabric of the young Ranger’s red fleece jacket. Mark shivered violently, as if his only source of warmth had suddenly been withdrawn.

      ‘Let’s get inside,’ said Owen. ‘It’s cold out here. You look to me as though you need a hot drink. A cup of my tea will bring some colour back to your cheeks, won’t it? Green, maybe – but at least it’ll be colour.’

      Mark СКАЧАТЬ