Cooper recalled very clearly standing outside the Plague Cottage that first time, reading the names of the dead on the plaque. It was all very well for people like Diane Fry to scoff at Eyam’s fame as the Plague Village, to laugh at the idea of souvenir rats and tableaux of people in night shirts with their necks covered in bubos. But for him, there was one fact which had made the whole story different, and much more personal. According to the well-documented history of Eyam’s plague year, the very first family to fall victim to the Black Death had been Coopers.
Fry had been only a few minutes late for her appointment to see Detective Superintendent Branagh. Yet when she entered the superintendent’s office, she felt a bit like the naughty child sent to see the head teacher for breaking wind in class.
The superintendent’s office was on the upper floor of Divisional HQ, looking down on Gate C and the back of the East Stand at Edendale Football Club. That view seemed to have become a status symbol among the senior management team. It was also one of the few offices with air conditioning, but it wasn’t in use today, and the room was a bit too warm. Branagh sniffed as she entered, like a disapproving matron.
After her visit to Mrs Forbes this afternoon, the first thing that struck Fry as she sat down was that Superintendent Branagh would make a good Master of the Hounds. She had a sudden image of Branagh, whip in hand, boots polished, riding britches specially tailored to accommodate her hips. The perfect companion for Lord Somebody or Other, whose portrait was in the National Gallery.
The superintendent flicked a file open impatiently, with no time to spare for the social niceties, making it plain that Fry had kept her waiting.
‘As you know, DS Fry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been reviewing the files of all CID staff in this division. Some of the Personal Development Reviews make interesting reading. Very interesting.’
‘I’m sure they’ve all been done properly, ma’am.’
‘Indeed. I’ll be talking to you about your team in due course. But, in the first instance, I’ve been looking at your record, and your case histories, DS Fry,’ she said. ‘Would you accept that there have been some weaknesses in certain areas of your development during your time with E Division?’
‘Well… I suppose I still have some experience to gain in a supervisory role.’
Branagh was watching her, waiting for more. But Fry wasn’t about to give it to her. Why hand her superintendent ammunition by criticizing her own performance? It was an old managerial trick.
‘Well, the fact is,’ said Branagh, ‘that you haven’t really been getting results. At least, not the sort of results I would have hoped for from you, if I’d been here during the past couple of years. Would you agree with that assessment, DS Fry?’
No choice here. If Fry denied it, she would be forced to quote examples to support her argument. And right now, nothing came to mind.
‘I suppose so, ma’am.’
Branagh nodded. ‘I’m glad you agree. It’s a shame, because your early reports suggest that you were once considered a potential high-flier.’
Fry’s heart gave a lurch of shock. That was a real punch below the belt. All this time, she’d been considering herself a high-flier, on the surface at least. Deep down, she must have known that she wasn’t, not any more. Still a Detective Sergeant at the age of thirty? For heaven’s sake. It must have been obvious to everyone around her that she’d lost ground. She had been too busy with other concerns, taken up by so many distractions that she hadn’t been focusing on the job. Not the way she should have done.
When had it all started to go wrong? Not when she first transferred to Derbyshire. Well, not immediately, anyway. She’d been given the promotion almost straight away. But maybe that had been on the strength of her previous record. Somewhere, somehow, she had then taken her eye off the ball, had let her career get stagnant. She’d been drifting with the current, when she ought to have been swimming for land.
Damn it, Branagh was right. DS Diane Fry’s career had been ruined. In this stinking backwater, she had become soft and lazy. She’d gone native. Jesus, if she wasn’t careful, she could even end up like Ben Cooper.
Detective Superintendent Branagh was still talking, listing entries from her Personal Development Reviews. Targets and assessments, the occasions when guidance had been given, one instance when words of advice had been issued following a complaint of rudeness from a member of the public.
But Fry wasn’t really listening. She was recalling her first week on the job in Derbyshire, meeting her DI, and Hitchens asking her what she was aiming to achieve. ‘ I’m good at my job,’ she’d said. ‘ I’ll be looking for promotion. That’s what’s important to me.’
And, of course, she’d soon become aware of the talk around the station. Everyone said the force was short of female officers in supervisory ranks, especially in CID. Provided she kept her nose clean and smiled nicely at the top brass, she would shoot up the promotion ladder without trying. And there had been a quick promotion, too – the step up to Detective Sergeant, which hadn’t been popular with everyone.
But what had she done since then? Her brain searched for an answer that she could give Superintendent Branagh, some wonderful achievement that she could point to. But her mind was still coming up blank. That was the effect of shock tactics.
By a stroke of luck, the superintendent took her silence for absorption in some other subject than the one at hand.
‘We can resume this conversation at another time,’ she said. ‘I appreciate that you’re busy with the suspicious death case.’
‘Yes, ma’am. That’s true.’
‘Very well, then. We’ll resume tomorrow. That will give you a chance to think about what we’ve said so far.’
Reluctantly, Fry got up to leave. Then Branagh sniffed.
‘What is that smell?’
Fry became aware of the aroma that she must have been carrying around with her all afternoon on her jacket, and on her hands. And maybe on her shoes, if she’d been really unlucky. She’d better check in a minute, as soon as she got out of the room – but not while Branagh was watching her.
‘Horses, ma’am,’ she said. ‘It’s the smell of horses.’
‘I see,’ said Superintendent Branagh. She said it in the tone of someone who didn’t see at all, but considered it hardly worthwhile demanding an explanation.
15
As the temperature fell that evening, the moisture in the air began to form dense banks of fog on the higher ground. When Ben Cooper closed the front door of 8 Welbeck Street, he always looked up to see the hills. He found their presence reassuring, even in the dark, when they were black against the sky. But tonight, the hills above the town were masked by a grey blanket, and wisps of fog could be seen swirling above the streetlights.
Cooper’s local in Edendale was the Hanging Gate, a pub sitting in its own little yard off the High Street. When he first moved into the flat at Welbeck Street, he’d taken some trouble in finding the right sort of pub. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, not like some of his colleagues, who relied on alcohol to help them deal with the pressures of the job. A drink or two did help him relax. But most of all, a decent pub provided company, and a meal when you didn’t feel like cooking for yourself – which, in his case, was quite often.
Like so many pubs in the area, the Hanging Gate had framed scenic Peak District views on the walls, and even a few hunting prints. But the beer was good, and the choice of rock classics on the juke box was familiar and reassuring.
As he and Liz Petty stepped through the door on to the stone flags, Cooper nodded to a few acquaintances. He was pretty well known here now, but people left him alone. It wasn’t the sort of place where you got bothered if they knew you were a police officer. Another plus for the Hanging Gate.
He and Liz had been going out for several months now. It was one of those relationships that had grown up gradually from a casual awareness of someone in a different department at work into something more than friendship. It was supposed to be the way the best relationships developed, if you believed what the women’s magazines said.