Stephen Booth – One Last Breath (страница 8)

Pausing in the corridor, Fry pulled out her phone and dialled Cooper’s number again before she could stop to reconsider. But all she got was the recorded voice telling her his number was still unobtainable.

She thrust the phone back into her pocket and kept walking. That was the problem with feelings – they could be so ambiguous. It didn’t make any sense at all to feel disappointed and relieved at the same time.

* * *

‘The Devil’s Arse,’ said the older of the two girls, with conviction. ‘We want to go up the Devil’s Arse.’

Ben Cooper smiled at an old lady who turned to stare at them. He tried to get a sort of tolerant amusement into the smile, mingled with embarrassed apology. The old lady lowered her head and leaned to whisper something to a friend supporting herself on a walking frame. Cooper flushed, imagining the worst possible thing she could be saying.

They’re not mine, he’d wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t.

Although it was a Monday, the streets of Edendale were packed. The summer holiday season had started in the Peak District. It was sunny enough for the old ladies to stroll from their excursion coach to the tea rooms, as well as for younger visitors to shed some of their clothes and sprawl on the grass near the river. Cooper found it too humid in town when the weather was warm. He preferred to be on higher ground, where he could feel a bit of cool breeze coming over the moors.

In the pedestrianized area of Clappergate, they weaved their way between the benches and stone flowerbeds, wrought-iron lampposts and bicycle racks. A little way ahead was the Vine Inn and the brass plaque outside it that he knew so well: In memory of Sergeant Joseph Cooper of the Derbyshire Constabulary, who died in the course of his duty near here.

Cooper tried walking a bit more quickly. Perhaps if he could get away from the crowds, he’d feel a bit easier.

‘That’s rude,’ said Josie. ‘I don’t say rude words.’

‘“The Devil’s Arse” is what they call it,’ said Amy. ‘So it can’t be rude.’

‘It is.’

‘It’s not. Just you ask Uncle Ben.’

Cooper stopped. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said brightly.

‘Why can’t we ask you now?’ said Amy.

‘No, I mean we’re going there tomorrow.’

‘Peak Cavern,’ said Josie. ‘That’s what it’s called properly. We’ll go to Peak Cavern.’

Cooper was sweating. And it wasn’t just the humidity either. Talking to his nieces was like walking through a minefield these days. He didn’t want Matt and Kate accusing him of teaching the girls to say ‘arse’. But he could already hear them saying it when they went home to the farm tonight. Uncle Ben says we can say ‘arse’, Dad. Just great.

‘It’s your day off today,’ said Amy, who was the older of the two and knew CID shift patterns and duty rosters better than he did himself.

‘I’ve got two days off this time,’ he said. ‘So we can go tomorrow.’

‘But …’

‘Yes?’

‘But what if you get phoned up?’

Cooper sighed. He felt a surge of sympathy for all the family men on E Division. This must be what it was like for them all the time. The constant cries of: ‘Why weren’t you there, Dad?’, ‘It’s supposed to be your day off,’ and ‘What if you get phoned up?’

‘If I get phoned up,’ said Cooper, ‘we’ll go some other time. I promise.’

He could almost hear the girls weighing up the value of his promise, and judging its reliability. They were far too wise to trust any promise that an adult made, but they wanted to believe him. He opened his mouth to add: I’ve never let you down before, have I? But he knew it wouldn’t be true.

A party of hikers went by. Their clothes were dazzling, and their walking poles the latest anti-shock design. Getting kitted up for a day on the Derbyshire hills was becoming an exercise in fashion awareness, and all the accessories had to be exactly right. Soon, people would be choosing their rucksacks to match the colour of their eyes.

A white-haired man walked towards them on the pedestrianized area. The first thing Cooper noticed was his comb-over. Every time he saw one, Ben prayed that he’d have enough sense not to do it himself when he was losing his hair. Be bald, wear a hat – anything but a comb-over.

The man was wearing a silver-grey sports jacket and a blue silk shirt that hung outside his trousers. He had dazzling white trainers and a white toothbrush moustache that was probably the height of fashion when it had been black. His hair was long, too, even allowing for the requirements of his comb-over. He looked like an ageing British character actor playing the role of a faded gigolo.

Cooper was so distracted by the shopper that at first he didn’t notice a man in a security company uniform gesturing to him from the doorway of W.H. Smith’s. He was a retired police officer who had moved into the expanding private security business, so now he got a better uniform to wear.

‘I think there’s a couple of those Hanson brothers just been in here,’ he said. ‘Right toe-rags, they are. There’s a warrant out for both of them. I don’t know them myself, but it looked like them from the pictures.’

Cooper stopped. ‘I know them, but …’

‘You might want to keep an eye out for them. They’re probably somewhere down near the High Street.’

Amy and Josie were looking at the man and listening with interest.

‘Look, I’m off duty,’ said Cooper.

The security man noticed the girls for the first time. ‘Oh, right. You’ve got your kids with you.’

‘They’re not mine, actually.’

‘I see.’

‘They’re my nieces. My brother’s children.’

Cooper had realized before he even stopped to speak to him that the ex-bobby was just the right age to have worked with his father. He found himself fidgeting immediately, anxious to move on before the reminiscences began, the stories of late turns together as young PCs. Because they would be followed very quickly by the assurances of how much everyone had respected and loved Sergeant Joe Cooper, and how devastated they’d all been when it happened.

It wasn’t so much of a problem at the West Street station in Edendale these days, but the retired coppers were the worst. These were the blokes who had been counting the days and hours until they could collect their full pensions after thirty years’ service. Yet now you would think they’d been forced to leave behind the happiest days of their lives.

‘Must get on,’ said Cooper. ‘Nice to see you.’

‘Hey, these must be Joe Cooper’s grandchildren, then.’

But Cooper just waved and smiled as he put distance between himself and the doorway of Smith’s. Josie had to run to catch up with him.

Cooper thought occasionally of his own old age, though it was usually a brief speculation about whether he would live longer than his father had. He didn’t feel any great desire to be a dad himself. Not just yet, anyway. But when he was old, when he was as helpless as his own mother was now, who would be there to look after him? At the present rate, there would be no one.

But that day was decades away; not something to worry about now. It was only the approach of his birthday that was making him think about ageing. And it wasn’t just any birthday this time, either.

Joe Cooper’s birthday had been in July, too. That meant they shared the star sign of Cancer, the crab in its shell. An astrologer would probably have been delighted that it had taken Cooper so long to move out of Bridge End Farm for a place of his own. A reluctance to leave the family home, a need to cling on to his shell. He would be thirty years old on Saturday, for heaven’s sake.

As for his job, Cooper was sure he’d be asked one day soon to undergo a bit of lateral development and say goodbye to CID for a while. Somebody was going to turn up with a sharp knife to prise him out of his shell.

‘You should have introduced us to that man,’ said Amy. ‘He knew Granddad.’

‘I thought you wanted your lunch?’

‘It wasn’t very polite.’

‘You’re not polite either,’ said Josie to her sister. ‘You say “arse”.’

Cooper wondered for a moment if he was being selfish. He hadn’t wanted to hear a retired bobby’s stories about his father. In fact, he’d been worried that this ex-copper might have been one of those called to the scene of Sergeant Joe Cooper’s death, and would therefore be carrying a picture in his head of the body lying in its pool of blood. He definitely didn’t want to go there.

But Amy and Josie might want to talk about their grandfather with someone who’d known him, someone other than a member of their own family. It might help them understand what had happened.

Cooper shook his head. That was something else he wasn’t going to take responsibility for. Matt could negotiate that minefield himself.

At the corner of High Street and Clappergate, a few yards short of McDonald’s, Cooper saw two of the Hanson brothers across the road. He recognized them without any problem. He’d arrested them himself before now, and in fact had been to school with their oldest brother. These two had failed to answer to bail given them by a lenient magistrates’ bench and had been rumoured to have left Derbyshire altogether, for fear of ending up back inside. Cooper reached automatically for his mobile phone, only now realizing that he had forgotten to switch it back on after the cave rescue exercise.