Текст книги "Black Dog"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

Соавторы: Stephen Booth
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

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 down to a debate about the bloodstains on their boots. Their argument was that they just got splashed because they were standing too close.' He paused, his eyes distant and full of remembered anger and pain. 'Three of them got two years for manslaughter, the others were put on probation for affray. First-time offenders, you see. Of course, they were all drunk too. But that's a mitigating circumstance, isn't it, as far as the courts are concerned? An excuse.'

‘I really didn't know, Ben.'

‘Do you think I would have asked you to play squash tonight if I thought you knew? I'm not that desperate for company.' He ran the handkerchief round the back of his neck. 'I'm not sure it was a good idea to play in this weather anyway.'

‘You should have said something about your father. Why didn't you tell me?’

Cooper looked down at his feet.

‘If you really want to know, I get fed up of hearing about it. It's been constantly rammed down my throat for two years now. I have to look at that bloody plaque every time I walk through reception. Do you know there's even a little brass plate screwed on to one of the benches in Clappergate? That's so that the Edendale public don't forget either. I've got so that I avoid walking down that part of Clappergate. I go round by another street to avoid seeing it. And then all those people who remember him. Thousands of them. Even those who'd never heard of him before he died, they knew all about him by the time the papers had finished with the story.'

‘Like in Moorhay

‘Yeah. Like in Moorhay. "It's Sergeant Cooper's lad." "Aren't you Sergeant Cooper's son?" It hurts every time. Every time I hear somebody say it, it's like they're twisting a knife in an old wound to keep it fresh. My father's death devastated my life. And people are never going to let me forget it. Sometimes I think that if one more person calls me Sergeant Cooper's lad, it's going to be too much. I'm going to go berserk.’

He squeezed the squash ball in his fist, bounced it off the floor and smacked it almost casually against the back wall with his racquet, so that it flew high into the air and dropped back into his hand.

‘Were you working in E Division when it happened?’

‘I was already in CID. In fact, at that very moment I'd just arrested a burglar, a typical bit of Edendale lowlife. I heard the shout on the radio while I was sitting in the car with him. It's not a moment I'm likely to forget.’

And it didn't put you off the police service?' He looked surprised.

‘Of course not. Quite the opposite. It made me more determined.'

‘Determined? You've got ambitions?'

‘I have. In fact, there's a sergeant's job coming vacant soon,' he said. 'I'm up for it.'

‘Good luck, then,' said Fry. 'You must have a good chance.'

‘Oh, I don't know any more,' he said doubtfully. 'I thought I had, but . .

‘Of course you have.' She glared at him, irritated by the sudden slump in his shoulders. He had talked about his father with anger and passion, but he had changed in a few seconds, and now he had the air of defeat.

‘You reckon?'

‘You seem to be very highly regarded. Everybody knows you round the division. Not to mention the general public.'

‘Oh yeah, the public,' he said dismissively.

‘If they had a vote on it, you'd be mayor by now.’

‘Yeah? Well, we all know how much we can trust them.’

But Fry had done her apologies now and was gettingfed up with his reluctance to shake off whatever was making him so moody and morose. She watched him bounce the ball again and swing his racquet at it, hitting a slow lob that curled back towards them.

‘You know, it must be really nice to have so many friends,' she said, 'and such a close family too.’

He took his eye off the ball, puzzled by the change in her voice.

‘I don't suppose you'll ever move away from here, will you, Ben? You'll marry somebody, maybe some old schoolfriend, and you'll settle down here, buy a bungalow, have kids, get a dog, the whole bit.'

‘Sure,' he said. 'It sounds great.'

‘I can't think of anything worse,' she said, and smashed the ball into the ceiling lights.

*

Charlotte Vernon had found Daniel in Laura's room. On the dresser was a pile of letters that had been tied neatly in a pink ribbon. Charlotte had seen the letters before, but had not touched them. She had not touched anything of Laura's yet. It seemed too much of an acknowledgement that she had gone for ever.

‘I wrote to tell her that I would be home last weekend,' said Daniel. 'She wanted to talk to me, she said.’

‘What about?'

‘I don't know. It sounded serious. I told her I would be home for the weekend. But I wasn't. I didn't come home.'

‘You always wrote to her far more than you wrote to us, Danny.'

‘To you? You never needed letters – you always had your own concerns. But Laura needed contact with the outside world. She felt she was a prisoner here.’

‘Nonsense.'

‘Is it?’

Daniel turned over another letter and ran his eyes briefly over his own scrawl. His mother walked to the window and fiddled with the curtains as she peered down into the garden, squinting against the sunlight reflecting from the summerhouse. She moved a porcelain teddy bear back into its proper place on the window ledge, from where it had been left by the police. It was a Royal Crown Derby paperweight with elaborate Imari designs on its waistcoat and paws, a gift to Laura from Graham after a business trip. Charlotte averted her eyes from the room and turned to stare at her son, studying his absorption until she became impatient.

‘What exactly are you looking for, Danny? Evidence of your own guilt?’

Daniel went red. 'I certainly don't need to look for yours. Yours or Dad's. It's been pushed in my face for long enough.'

‘Don't talk like that.’

Charlotte had been upset herself by the fact that her son had failed to return to his home, even for a day or two, between the doubtful attractions of a holiday spent in Cornwall with his friends and the peculiar sense of obligation that drew him back to university so long before the start of term. She didn't know the reason he stayed away. Now she pulled a face at the streaks of dirt on Daniel's jeans, the scuffs on his shoes and the powerful smell of stale sweat. He looked tired, his fleshy face shadowed with dark lines and a day's growth of stubble. He reminded her so strongly of his father as he had once been, nineteen years ago, before success and money had superimposed a veneer of courtesy and sophistication. Graham, too, had been a man whose passions were barely kept in check.

‘There's one missing,' said Daniel suddenly.

‘What?’

A letter. I wrote to Laura from Newquay last month. But it's not there; there's a gap. Where is it? She always kept them together.'

‘The police have been through them,' said Charlotte uncertainly. 'I suppose they might have taken one.’

‘What the hell for?'

‘I don't know. It depends what was in it, doesn't it?' Are they allowed to do that?'

‘I suppose your father will have given them permission. You'll have to ask him. I don't know what they were looking for.’

Daniel put the letters down. He tied them together again with the ribbon, securing it carefully and neatly despite the trembling in his hands.

‘It's bloody obvious what they were looking for.’

As he headed for the door, Charlotte caught his arm. She could tell he hadn't washed today, perhaps for more than one day. The back of his neck was grubby and the collar of his T-shirt was stained. She longed to propel him physically to the bathroom and demand his filthy clothes for the wash, as she would once have done when he was a year or two younger.

But Charlotte knew her son had passed well beyond her control. What he did in Exeter was a mystery to her. He no longer told her about his course, about his friends or where he lived. She could no longer understand the angry, disapproving young man he had become.

‘Danny,' she said. 'Don't condemn us so much. There's no need to stir up old arguments that aren't relevant to all this. Let the police find out what happened to Laura. The rest of us have to go on living together without her.' She watched his sullen expression and saw his face was closed against her. She felt his muscles tense to pull away from her, to shake off the last physical link between them. 'Your father —’

But it was the wrong thing to say. Daniel knocked her hand from his arm. 'How can I not condemn you? You and my father are responsible for what happened to Laura. You're responsible for what she became.’

He paused in the doorway of Laura's room, his face suffused with rage and contempt as he looked back at Charlotte. 'And you, Mum, you couldn't even see what it was that she'd turned into.’

*

The three old men were crammed into the front of Wilford's white pick-up as it wound its way down from Eyam Moor towards the Hope Valley. They had avoided the main routes, leaving them to the tourists. But when they reached the A625 they would meet the evening traffic coming back from Castleton.

They huddled among empty feed sacks and neglected tools. The floor of the cab was littered with crumpled newspapers, an old bone, a plastic bucket and a small sack containing a dead rabbit. Sam was squeezed uncomfortably between the other two, shifting his bony knees to find room for his stick under the dashboard and wincing at every bump they hit. Wilford was driving, his cap pulled low on his head to stop his hair blowing about in the breeze from the open window. He drove with sudden twists of the steering wheel and sharp stabs on the brake as they approached each bend. Harry, on the outside, looked as though he was sitting in a limousine. His hands were spread on his knees, and his head moved slowly from side to side as he studied the passing scenery.

In the back of the pick-up, riding in the open on a bed of hessian sacks, was the brown and white goat. It was tethered securely to the backboard of the cab with a short length of chain so that it could not reach the sides. Every now and then it turned its head and bellowed at a startled cyclist.

The snaking twists of the road slowed a lumbering quarry lorry ahead of the pick-up. All around them were the familiar tucks and folds of the hills and the strange, unpredictable rolls of the landscape that concealed the history of the ancient lead mining industry. There were overgrown hollows and mounds running across one field, indicating the line of a rake vein. Here and there stood an isolated shaft, walled off for safety. Many years ago, two bodies had been pulled out of one of these shafts in a notorious murder case.

‘Even with all their scientific tests,' said Harry, 'the coppers still go round asking a lot of questions.' "Course they do,' said Wilford.

‘But it's like in the song,' said Sam.

‘What's that?’

Sam began to sing quietly in a cracked, off-key voice. The tune was just recognizable as one familiar to them all – '01' Man River' from the musical Showboat. After a moment, the other two joined in with the song, tuneless and punctuating their singing with laughter.

‘Don't say nothing,' said Sam firmly, when they had finished.

*

Just outside Bamford, Wilford drove the pick-up into an untidy farmyard and sounded his horn. Two half-bred Alsatians ran out of a kennel until they hit the end of their chains and barked and snarled at the wheels of the vehicle. A man of about forty with wild hair and a vast bushy beard came out of the house and wandered towards them.

Wilford greeted him as 'Scrubby'.

‘You brought the young nanny then?' he said.

The goat screamed hysterically from the back of the pick-up. The noise was so loud in the yard that the dogs stopped barking, stunned into silence.

Aye, happen that'll be her now,' said Wilford.

‘Bugger's been giving directions all the way here,' said Harry. 'It's worse than having the wife in the car.'

‘You've not brought any dogs, have you?' said Scrubby. 'Only it upsets them two over there.'

‘Not in here,' said Wilford.

The three old men climbed carefully out of the cab, creaking as they straightened their legs. Harry put his arm round Sam and helped him down the step until he could support himself with his stick.

‘Bloody hell, what's that?' asked Sam as a ripe, musky stench slithered across the yard and grabbed the back of his nostrils. 'It smells like someone's been sick and set fire to it.’

Ah, that's the billy,' said Scrubby. 'He's in breeding condition a bit early this year. I reckon the young 'un can smell him all right.’

A rapid smacking sound was coming from the back of the pick-up. The goat was wagging her tail so fast it was beating a tune on the metal sides. She was straining at her tether until the collar bit into her neck deep enough to choke her. She yelled again when she saw Wilford.

Are you going to mate her now? Can we watch?' asked Sam.

"Course you can. I don't even charge for tickets.’

The goat tugged them over to a low stone building, not much bigger than a pig sty, with an enclosed yard on two sides. The building seemed to be the source of the smell. The three old men bent to peer through a small opening into the gloom of the shed. They could make out something large and hairy moving restlessly inside, pawing at the gate with its hooves and rubbing its head on the walls.

‘Bloody hell,' said Sam. 'He's got a pair of bollocks on him as big as your prize turnips, Wilford.' The goat looked suddenly as though she might change her mind and go home.

‘Come on, Jenny,' said Wilford gently.

Together, they pushed the goat into the yard and Scrubby drew back a bolt on the door. They let out a concerted breath as the billy emerged, steaming and snorting. He was twice the size of the young goat, with a powerful chest and a dense, matted coat. He had thick, twisted slabs of horn curling on to the back of his head like gnarled tree roots, and along his spine the hair was going thin, revealing grey patches of flaky skin, tough and wrinkled like the hide of an elephant. The two goats began to circle together, sniffing excitedly at each other's rear ends. The billy's top lip curled back to expose his bare upper gum in a grotesque, leering grin as he savoured the scent of sexual promise.

Scrubby was looking curiously at Harry, scratching at his beard and tugging at an old bit of baling twine lashed round the gate of the enclosure.

‘I heard you're the bloke who found that lass that was murdered over your way.’

Aye, news travels well round here.'

‘It's a bit of a funny do that, isn't it?'

‘Bloody hilarious,' said Harry.

‘I saw her picture in the paper. Bashing her head in is about the last thing most young blokes would want to do with her.'

‘Oh aye?'

‘Don't you think so?'

‘She was only fifteen,' said Wilford, without looking round.

Scrubby seemed to recognize something in the tone of the reply.

‘I suppose so,' he said.

In the enclosure, the billy was trying repeatedly to manoeuvre himself into a position to mount Jenny from behind, but the goatling was getting frisky. She was lighter on her feet than the billy, and every time he approached her she skipped away, turning to face him, then trotting off again, her tail wagging provocatively. The billy was growling from the back of his throat with his mouth hanging open, producing a deep moan like a wild animal in pain. He kicked at Jenny with his front hooves, smearing dirty marks on her flanks. As he got more frustrated, he began to gobble excitedly. His tongue flopped out of his mouth and saliva flew. The feet of the two goats were churning up the surface of the enclosure, and dust coated the white hair on their legs. In avoiding the billy, Jenny tripped, stumbled to her knees, got up and skipped away again.

‘It doesn't look like she's cooperating,' said Scrubby. Sam nodded. 'Playing hard to get.'

‘She's only a young 'un,' said Wilford. 'She doesn't know what's happening.'

‘She has to stand still, though.’

Scrubby reluctantly climbed over the fence into the enclosure. The billy growled at him, then returned his attentions to the nanny.

Next time the young goat came within reach, Scrubby grabbed her by the neck and pulled her towards him. He twisted her collar until he had her in a stranglehold, with her face turned up towards him and her eyes rolling in alarm. She was panting by now, her nostrils pink and flaring and her sides heaving.

‘You have to do this sometimes with the young 'uns,’

said Scrubby. 'They get the hang of it after the first time. The old chap there knows what he's about, though.' The billy glared at him once, then took a few short steps and launched himself on to the young goat, digging his hooves hard into her sides and throwing the weight of his hairy body on to her back. Scrubby hung on grimly, tightening the nanny's collar so that she couldn't escape. She began to moan and whimper, and her breath came in short gasps. The billy balanced himself on her bony pelvis and thrust into her. The young goat's back legs buckled, and she began to collapse under his weight. Scrubby hauled her forcibly upwards to keep her off the ground. The billy thrust three more times in rapid succession, then tossed back his head and gradually slid off. It was over.

Scrubby eased his grip on the goatling's collar, and she began to cough spasmodically. Her legs were trembling and a string of white semen dripped from the bare patch of skin on the underside of her tail.

There was silence for a moment, except for the painful coughing of the goat.

‘She didn't enjoy that much,' remarked Wilford in a strange voice.

‘She's just immature, that's all.'

‘Is that it, then?’

Jenny crouched and a stream of pale yellow urine hit the dirt. The billy stepped forward to sniff at the stream, then began to lap at it eagerly with his long tongue. The old men screwed up their faces and shuffled uneasily.

‘I'll just hang on to her for a bit, while he gets his breath,' said Scrubby. 'Then he can have another go.'

*

The three men were quiet in the pick-up on the journey back to Moorhay. The visit to Bamford seemed to have subdued them.

‘Reckon she'll be all right?' said Wilford, as they climbed the hill out of the Hope Valley.

‘He looked as though he knows his animals,' said Sam.

‘It seems hard on them, when they're so young. She was a bit innocent.'

‘Innocent?' said Harry. 'She was screaming for it all the way there, wasn't she?’

The others nodded uncomfortably, and Sam gave a painful cough. He looked exhausted by the drive, and had lost his willingness to make a joke. Wilford stared grimly through the windscreen until Harry spoke again as they breasted the rise that looked down on to their own valley.

‘I think,' said Harry, 'I might tell them a bit of what I know, after all.’

Sam and Wilford nodded again. After that, nobody spoke all the way home. And nobody sang.