Dancing With the Virgins. Stephen Booth
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was a yellow Dawes. I recognized it as one of the hire bikes. It had been chucked into the bottom of a gorse bush, in the middle of some birch trees. One of the wheels was off too. I thought somebody had hired it and had an accident and just left it. They do things like that.’
‘Who do?’
‘Well, you know – the visitors. Tourists. They just leave a bike somewhere and say it’s been stolen or they’ve lost it or something. You wouldn’t believe the lies some of them tell.’
‘Did you touch the bike?’
‘No.’
‘You’re quite sure about that, Mark?’
‘Yeah. I just looked for the number. Because I thought it was one of the hire bikes. And it was, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was.’ Cooper could hear the gratification in the DCI’s voice. The fact it was a hire bike had made it so much easier to identify the victim. She had been obliged to leave her full name and address and proof of identity at the cycle hire centre when she took the bike out earlier that afternoon. So they had already established that her name was Jenny Weston, that she was thirty years old and divorced. She worked as a customer service manager in a large insurance office in Sheffield, and had taken a week’s holiday because she had several days’ leave to get in before the end of the year. By now, her parents had already been contacted, and her father was on his way to identify the body formally. If only it were always so easy.
‘Then I saw something lying in the middle of the Virgins,’ said Mark. ‘I went to have a look. Although –’
‘Yes?’
‘Well … I could already see what it was. I could tell, from a few yards away, from where I found the bike. It was a woman. And she was dead.’
Mark moved his hands restlessly, brushing the front of his fleece. Cooper thought at first that he was trying to rub off the vomit stain, but realized he was wrong. The young Ranger was stroking the badge stitched to the fabric, fondling as if it were the breast of a lover, tracing the silver letters and the stylized millstone symbol of the Peak Park.
‘Did you notice anything about the body?’ asked Tailby.
Mark hesitated. ‘Only that she was, you know …’ His hands made half-hearted gestures. ‘Her clothes …’
‘You mean her clothes had been interfered with?’
Mark nodded.
‘And did you notice anything else nearby? Anything unusual or out of place?’
‘No.’
‘So how close did you get to the body, Mark?’
‘I walked as far as the nearest stone. The flat one. I didn’t have to go any closer.’
‘You were quite sure she was dead?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mark. ‘Oh yes.’
Mark suddenly went a shade whiter. His hand went over his mouth, and he made a dash for the loo. A second later, the police officers heard the sound of vomiting.
DCI Tailby sat for a moment longer, as if still listening for elusive bits of information in the Ranger’s retching.
‘Cooper, find that Area Ranger,’ he said. ‘He knows the lie of the land round here, if anybody does. Tell him we need to arrange proper access to the moor. We need the owner of the land or whoever. And we need to get into that quarry, too. Get on to it.’
Ben Cooper found the Area Ranger waiting by his silver Land Rover outside the briefing centre. Owen Fox was in his early fifties, with grey hair and a thick beard that was going the same way. He was a comfortable badger of a man, with an even more comfortable smell of wool and earth.
‘Mr Fox?’
The Ranger turned, with a distracted air. Though Cooper was wearing his dark green waxed jacket over civilian clothes, he thought Owen would recognize him as a policeman. People always seemed able to tell. They said it was something to do with the look in your eyes.
‘Can I help?’
‘I’m Detective Constable Cooper. If you’ve got time, I’d like to call on your local knowledge.’
Cooper explained that he had been given the job of opening up access to the disused quarry and of securing the route for vehicles to get to the crime scene.
‘We need to see Warren Leach then,’ said Owen.
‘And he is …?’
‘Ringham Edge Farm. He owns most of the moor. The old quarry road runs across his land. We can go in the Land Rover, if you like.’
The farm was reached by a back road out of the village of Ringham Lees, an almost invisible turning by the corner of the Druid pub. A group of a dozen or so youngsters were hanging around in a bus shelter near the pub. When they saw the lights of the Land Rover coming, two teenage boys ran across the road directly in front of its bonnet and stood laughing and waving from the opposite pavement.
‘Some of these young people,’ said Owen. ‘Their common sense has left home before them. And it didn’t give a forwarding address.’
‘We get a lot like them in Edendale,’ said Cooper.
‘I bet you do.’
The Ranger had four radio sets in the cab of the Land Rover. The wide-band set under the dashboard was constantly scanning the channels for the Ranger Service and other local organizations. Another set was for the Mountain Rescue team. Behind the seats, fixed to a wire grille, were two battery-operated handsets on permanent charge for when they were needed. Cooper saw that there was also a satellite positioning device in a leather case. But the best-used piece of equipment seemed to be the vacuum flask. It was battered, but no doubt a welcome sight on a freezing day on the moors.
‘Some of this technology is all right,’ said Owen. ‘But we’ll be completely computerized one day. I only hope it’s after my time. I was brought up to think “online” meant your mum had just put the washing out.’
Cooper laughed. ‘Did you say this Leach owns the moor?’
‘Part of it. It’s all privately owned, one way or another. The PDNPA doesn’t own any land, you know. Being a national park doesn’t mean what people think it means.’
‘No, I know.’
‘But Ringham Moor is one of those places where the landowners have an access agreement with the national park, so Rangers are involved a lot. Especially with the attention the Nine Virgins get. They seem to have a special significance at the summer solstice – a bit like Stonehenge, you know? There can be two hundred or so people gathered up there – illegally, I might add, under the access agreement; not to mention the by-laws covering ancient monuments.’
‘But what do they get up to exactly?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. Music, jugglers, camp fires. Children and dogs running round. It’s a bit like a medieval fair. One year we had to call in a mountain rescue team to carry off a young lady who’d been dancing from stone to stone, but fell off and broke her leg. Every year I pray it will rain – it keeps things quiet for a change.’
‘So much for the peace and quiet of the Peak District.’
‘Peace and quiet? One of our biggest jobs is looking after the safety of visitors. None of them have any common sense. If we left the fences off the old mine shafts, half of them would throw themselves in, thinking it was a new visitor experience.’
Owen Fox had a direct gaze and a sly smile in his eyes when he made a joke, though his face hardly moved. It took a bit of careful listening to understand when he was joking.
‘I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else, though,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve even picked the exact stone where I want my ashes to be scattered.’