The Devil's Edge (29 page)

It was funny how a photograph could strike so much more directly to the memory. Perhaps there were too many distractions when you met someone on the street, or saw them at a showground. The voice might sound familiar, the mannerisms might ring a bell, but the brain just didn’t have enough focus to put the features together and make that leap of recognition. Yet when you sat down and studied a photo of the same person, suddenly it was all there.

Cooper jumped at a loud rapping on his window. His heart pounded in shock. He must be in a more nervous state than he’d thought. Normally he would have noticed someone approaching his car. Normally he wouldn’t have reacted as if he’d been shot.

He looked up to see Carol Villiers’ face pressed against the glass. He unlocked the door, and she jumped eagerly into the passenger seat.

‘Just wondering,’ she said. ‘We haven’t spoken to Sarah Holland again. Or to Tyler Kaye at all. Weren’t we going to do that today?’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘I see.’

She produced her notebook, and Cooper watched her expectantly. He recognised an element of teasing in her tone. He probably shouldn’t allow that. But he let it go, because he knew she had something he wanted.

‘Did you know there were fifteen complaints to the district council about neighbour nuisance?’ she said. ‘But none from Russell Edson. And none about him either.’

‘There must be some other motive,’ said Cooper. ‘Maybe disputes that end in court aren’t the problem. There could be one that everyone is keeping quiet about.’

Villiers beamed. ‘You’re right. How come you’re always right, Ben?’

‘I can’t explain it. It just comes naturally.’

‘It’s all in the breeding. I see.’

Cooper closed his laptop. He was learning that he couldn’t hurry Villiers when she had something to say. The more important it was, the longer she seemed to take getting the information out. She liked to savour the tastiest titbits before she released them.

‘So there was some kind of dispute between Edson and the Barrons?’

‘Absolutely. But not over anything so trivial as the ownership of a bit of land. This was about money. A large amount of money.’

‘Ah. Now that’s getting to the real life blood of Riddings.’

‘Yes. And to follow your analogy – our Russell was bleeding profusely. It seems Mr Edson has been spending an awful lot of money on legal fees, without the dispute ever coming to court. He hired private detectives and paid for surveillance. He must have collected a mass of information, everything that could be known about the Barrons. He was like a jealous husband digging up dirt on his wife’s lover.’

‘What?’ Cooper felt confused now. ‘He didn’t have a wife. Was he interested in Zoe Barron?’

‘No, in Jake.’

‘Eh?’

Villiers laughed. ‘Not like that. No, Mr Edson was interested in destroying him.’

Cooper gazed at the stone houses clustered in the centre of Riddings. The quaint narrow lanes, the old horse trough, the neat grass verges, the Union Jack flying at the crossroads. Beyond the centre lay the large, expensive properties, with their pony paddocks and landscaped gardens. It was a place for the upwardly mobile, in more than one sense. Property prices in the seven-figure bracket, and a long drag up that hill without a car.

Yet in another sense, this village was still a jungle – dark and wild, crawling with primal instincts.

‘This has taken some digging out,’ said Villiers. ‘Gavin has helped me to tap into all the best sources. It’s amazing what you can come up with when you start piecing bits of information together. But it’s all there somewhere, waiting for someone to put two and two together.’

‘Tell me,’ said Cooper. ‘I can’t bear this.’

‘Okay, here goes. Jake Barron had persuaded Edson to put a lot of money into the carpet business. And when the company went bankrupt, Edson realised he’d lost it all.’

‘Bankrupt? I thought the Barrons were doing well?’

‘No, they just tried to give that impression.’

‘Oh, personalised number plates. I see.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, it seems they had decided to expand the business just at the wrong time,’ said Villiers. ‘They bought out another firm with stores in Ireland. Paid through the nose for it, too. At the time, they said it was a perfect fit to grow the business. But they didn’t know the recession was about to hit. And it was worse in Ireland than here, as you know. The economy was decimated. The Celtic Tiger rolled over and died.’

‘So the Barrons overstretched themselves.’

‘By a long way. They had a bit of a cushion to carry them through for a while, but they couldn’t survive forever waiting until the upturn came along. They’d taken out a massive loan from their bank for the purchase, and it was being called in. The bankers couldn’t see any prospect of a return on their money, so they pulled the plug. I’m told the chain of carpet warehouses is only days away from going into receivership.’

‘I must say, Jake Barron didn’t seem to be suffering from the effects of a financial crisis,’ said Cooper.

‘That must have been what infuriated Edson most, seeing the Barrons still spending money when he was about to lose everything.’

‘Yes, I can imagine.’

‘Jake was a smart businessman, you see,’ said Villiers. ‘He moved all his assets into his wife’s name before the crash came and the crisis became public. The house was entirely hers, for a start. Yes, a smart businessman, Jake. But Russell Edson wasn’t. He was just a jobbing builder who got lucky.’

‘And then very unlucky.’

DI Hitchens was smiling when they met him near the horse trough in the centre of the village. It seemed like the first time he’d done that all week.

‘Well, Ben – it looks as though you’ve come up smelling of roses. Unlike some of the officers in the task force.’

‘Sir?’

‘They recovered a couple of items from one of the slurry pits. An HTC android mobile phone, and a purse containing a hundred and fifty pounds in cash.’

‘Zoe Barron’s property.’

‘Yes. But I don’t understand …’

‘What?’

‘Well, why would they just dump their haul? Including the cash – that doesn’t make sense. Even if they were afraid of getting caught, they would keep the cash, wouldn’t they? Or stash it somewhere at least. Somewhere they could recover it later, I mean – not a slurry pit, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Doesn’t it seem likely that those items were taken to distract our attention from something else?’

‘But from what?’

‘From the real motive for the attack.’

‘The real motive?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Cooper. ‘What about Russell Edson? Any sign of him? If we don’t find him now, we’ll have a problem. There’s a mist coming down, and it’s going to be dark soon.’

‘Well, we’ve found his red MG. It’s been left up at the car park by Riddings Edge.’

27

Cooper loved the transitional nature of dusk. He liked the way the colours changed, and the world slipped into shadow. It was fascinating how a figure moving in the distance could become smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter, until it was no longer a movement but a trick of the light.

At the car park below Riddings Edge, the only light seemed to come from within the mist itself. It was as if it had swallowed light from the day and was leaking it slowly back into the valley.

Apart from Russell Edson’s red MG, there were only a couple of vehicles still in the car park. Late-evening walkers? Photographers hoping to capture a sunset? Or maybe it was something more. From here, Cooper couldn’t see Riddings at all. Instead, he was looking down towards the River Derwent, and beyond it a small hump of land that hid the larger village of Calver.

A gnawing in his stomach, which he’d thought was anxiety or fear, suddenly resolved itself, as he realised that he hadn’t eaten anything all day. He was starving. He had a vivid image of a pub that stood in the middle of Calver, overlooking the cricket field. A sprawling Georgian inn, said to be haunted. It was a pub, not a fancy restaurant, but it did good food. A lot of their produce was sourced from the area, and local people left bags of plums, pears and rhubarb at the back door, which was one of the reasons home-made desserts were always available.

It was the sort of place Cooper would choose to go to like a shot. But not Russell Edson. No home-grown rhubarb pie for him.

He tried Edson’s mobile number again. It was engaged, as it had been for some time.

Villiers and Hitchens arrived in the car park. A marked police car went past with its lights flashing, though Cooper couldn’t guess where it was heading.

‘Russell Edson?’ said Hitchens. ‘This is a firm suspect?’

‘Mr Edson is much too respectable to get his own hands dirty, of course,’ said Villiers. ‘So he must have contracted it out. Got a man in to do the job.’

‘In a way,’ said Cooper.

Villiers looked at him curiously, but he kept his face as straight as he could.

‘There’s very little daylight left,’ said Hitchens. ‘I think we’re going to have to leave it until morning, Ben. We can’t risk officers up there in the dark. They would all get lost and break their legs. The compensation payments don’t bear thinking about.’

When Hitchens turned away to respond to a call on his radio, Cooper looked up at the edge and saw a figure. Not an outcrop of rock this time, or a trick of the light – but a human figure gazing down towards Riddings.

‘Carol,’ he said, indicating the spot.

‘I see him. Is it …?’

‘I think so.’

He tried the number again. And this time it rang.

‘Mr Edson? Where are you?’

‘Ah, Sergeant Cooper. Where else would I be? I’m on the edge.’

‘Stay right where you are.’

‘Only if I choose to, Sergeant.’

Cursing under his breath, Cooper began to climb the path from the car park towards the edge. Villiers fell in behind him.

By the time they reached the moor, it was totally dark. The lights from Riddings and the other villages in the valley failed to reach this far. Besides, the sky overhead was black with clouds, which blotted out the stars and any moon there might have been. It wasn’t a night for watching meteor showers.

As the thought went through Cooper’s head, it began to rain. Heavy drops were suddenly beating on his shoulders and soaking his hair. He’d come without a waterproof, but there was no time to go back. Villiers, of course, had been much more sensible.

‘If I can get close enough, I’ll try talking to him,’ said Cooper. ‘But I don’t want to alarm him too much. He might be in a dangerous state.’

‘You mean you want me to stay out of the way, in case I frighten him,’ said Villiers.

‘Not exactly. But I think we can do this without fuss. He just needs approaching the right way.’

‘All right. I’ll take the other path and go round.’

‘Can you find it?’

‘I’m like a cat in the dark.’

Villiers vanished into the darkness, swishing through the wet bracken. Cooper continued up the path alone, placing his feet carefully out of the streams of water running down from the edge.

Normally, the night was the perfect time to walk on the moor. Out here in the dark, you could experience the place properly. Your eyes had a chance to adjust to the darkness, free from the glow of city lights. But you needed to use your night hearing too, and your other senses. The moor became a different world then. Its size was measured as much by sound and smell as by sight. You became more aware of the hum of life around you. Not human life, but the sound of the natural world stirring in the safety of darkness.

Cooper looked up as he walked. The sky … well, the sky was so much more visible than during the day. It dominated the moor, weighed down on him as he walked. All the time he was conscious of its glittering black canopy hanging over his head and swirling on the horizon. Out on the moor at night, you soon became aware how big the sky was. So much bigger than your own little world. So huge that it put everything beneath it into perspective.

Cooper was well aware that some people never looked up at the sky. It just didn’t occur to them to step out at night into an empty landscape and gaze at the stars. It was no wonder they failed to keep their lives in proper perspective. Small things seemed to take on an enormous significance for them. A momentary offence became a matter of life and death. An insult was the last straw. And the outcome could be disastrous. Tragic. If only they would all stop occasionally and look at the night sky, just take a few minutes to count the stars and reflect on the millions of solar systems they represented. The mind reeled at the immensity of the universe. The soul was humbled at an individual’s insignificant place in it.

That was one of the reasons he had never thought the Chadwicks capable of acting against Jake and Zoe Barron. They had spent their time watching the Perseid meteor shower, up here on the Devil’s Edge in the darkness. No perceived insult or offence from their neighbours could seem important enough to them after that.

Moths appeared suddenly in front of his face, fluttering out of the night. His ears told him that invisible sheep lay breathing and cudding in the heather. A gust of wind rattled through the bracken like an approaching train, blowing a squall of rain against his face. But there was nothing to worry about here. None of those things was a threat. It was only the imagination that turned them into something quite different.

After a few minutes, his feet hit rock, and he knew he was near the edge. Stepping more carefully now, he felt his way between the boulders until a view opened up in front of him. It was a panorama across the Derwent Valley, deep pits of blackness with the lights of villages here and there like clusters of beads strung up the hillsides. From here, he could see right up to the ghostly gleam of the limestone quarries in Middleton Dale.

For a moment he experienced a surge of panic as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He didn’t normally suffer from vertigo. But the sudden drop appearing beneath his feet had thrown him off balance, mentally as well as physically. He swayed a little on the balls of his feet, held out his arms to steady himself. The sensation was like solid ground lurching beneath his boots, as if the horizontal rock shelf had tilted towards forty-five degrees in an effort to tip him off the edge into the valley. For that second, he’d thought he was about to join the dead sheep, broken and bloodied amid the wreckage of millstones. But gradually the world was righting itself, his balance steadied and he knew he wasn’t going to fall.

Cooper felt the sweat dampening his forehead as he took a deep breath. That was definitely a primal fear, the terror of falling from a great height. The edge was a place that seemed to exploit that fear. His footsteps had been led to the drop as if by some unseen temptation.

The moor might look bare and empty in the cold light of reality. But in the minds of the people who’d travelled across it, there must have existed a dark forest of superstition, a psychological world inhabited by trolls and demons, crowded with all kinds of dangers that lurked in the darkness. Their consciousness would have been full of stories of death and madness, tales of ghosts and cut-throats, fear of storms and fog and sucking bogs. Above all, this would have become a mythical landscape where you might encounter terrible beasts.

Yet if there were demons on Big Moor, he hadn’t seen them. The Savages had become as mythical as hobs. But what about the evil at work down there in Riddings? Were those devils human? Or just a part of the landscape?

His mobile phone rang. Just one ring, then silence. Cooper looked at the display, and recognised the number he’d dialled only a few minutes ago. That was clever. Edson had called his phone to establish his position in the darkness. Now he knew exactly how close Cooper was.

‘Don’t come any nearer, Sergeant.’

Cooper stopped, peering into the night.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, sir. I just need you to come with me.’

‘I’m fine here, thank you.’

‘Mr Edson …’

‘No. Stay where you are.’

As his eyes adjusted, Cooper began to make out the shape of the man a few yards away. He couldn’t be sure from here, but it looked as though Edson was standing right on the edge, on the very rim of a flat, rocky outcrop jutting out into space. His figure was outlined against the distant lights somewhere up the valley. Around him was nothing but empty air.

Cooper wiped the rain out of his eyes, and pulled his jacket closer around him. He was starting to get very cold, and the throbbing headache was returning. He knew that if he stayed motionless too long in this wind and rain, exhaustion would begin to get the better of him. He could feel it now, surging in waves through his veins.

This mustn’t take too long. The only thing he could do was distract Edson’s attention, or try to get him to talk.

‘Mr Edson, you’re not a rock climber, are you?’ he said.

‘Me? Good heavens, no.’

‘Much too dangerous for you, I suppose?’

‘I can’t see the point of it. Why do you ask?’

‘We found magnesium carbonate in your car.’

‘Magnesium …?’

‘It’s used sometimes in taxidermy, for whitening skulls. You don’t go in for taxidermy, do you?’

‘No, of course not. Stuffing dead animals?’ Edson stared at him. ‘Sergeant, have you lost your mind? What on earth are you talking about?’

‘The other most common use for magnesium carbonate is in the form of a chalk. It’s useful as a drying agent for the hands. To help the grip, you know. It’s used by most often by gymnasts and weightlifters. And by rock climbers, of course.’

‘I don’t know how it could have got into my car. That’s a bit of a mystery.’

‘Well, perhaps,’ said Cooper.

Through the rain, he saw another figure approaching along the edge. Not from the direction of the car park, but from the packhorse route. Villiers had worked her way round, finding her direction across the moor, even in the dark.

A blast of wind buffeted the edge, and Cooper had difficulty keeping his feet. Edson swayed and held out his arms to balance himself. He was wearing a long black coat, which flapped angrily in the wind. The downpour was becoming torrential now. It pounded on the rocks and cascaded over the edge, forming instant waterfalls.

This had to be done more quickly. Cooper knew he had to try to keep Edson talking, giving Villiers the chance to get into position.

‘We found Barry Gamble’s body,’ he said. ‘Was Mr Gamble trying to blackmail you, sir. Is that what it was?’

Edson laughed. ‘Oh, he tried. In a very roundabout way. He was wasting his time with me, though.’

‘Because of the money, you mean?’

‘The lottery money? It’s all vanished. Extravagant expenditure, a series of bad investments. I had to mortgage the house to release some capital, and now I can’t make the payments on it. Everything will have to go. No, there’s no money left, not a penny. I’m up to my neck in debt.’

‘So the big lottery winner is broke?’

‘Absolutely stony, I’m afraid.’

‘A whole series of mistakes, Mr Edson.’

‘Mistakes? Yes. Too many to count.’

Shivering, Cooper moved a few paces closer, feeling the rock carefully underfoot with each step. He saw Edson turn, and could sense the man looking at him through the rain.

‘It’s a pity I told you that Barry Gamble came to Riddings Lodge that night,’ said Edson. ‘You didn’t know about that until I mentioned it, did you? Gamble hadn’t let on.’

‘No, sir, he hadn’t.’

Edson shook his head. ‘Strange man. I didn’t expect him to be the sort of person to keep a secret. Just one more mistake.’

Finally, Cooper felt close enough to hold a proper conversation, instead of shouting against the noise of the wind and rain. He could almost see Edson’s eyes, just a glimmer of white in the darkness.

‘So what happened, Mr Edson? Why did it go so wrong?’

‘I’m not sure where it all went wrong. Oh, I didn’t know enough about money from the beginning, I suppose. I certainly didn’t realise how quickly it would disappear. And I was a fool to trust Jake Barron. But after that …’

A few more steps, and Cooper was close now. He could see Edson smiling sadly. Yet his expression also seemed to reflect a sort of satisfaction, as if somehow things had actually gone the way he expected.

‘After that was when everything really started to fall apart, surely?’ said Cooper. ‘The death of Zoe Barron wasn’t part of the plan, was it?’

‘What?’

‘I think you just wanted to punish the Barrons. But you hired the wrong people. You’d heard about the Savages and how they got away with their crimes. You figured another attack would just be put down to them. But the people you hired weren’t professionals like the Savages. These boys were complete amateurs. They had no idea how to do the job right. They didn’t know the way to hurt someone without killing them. They didn’t know what to do to make it look like a genuine robbery. A mobile phone and a purse? What sort of haul is that? Right there, when you made that decision – that was your worst mistake.’