The Dead Place. Stephen Booth
When Cooper got back to his flat that night, the light on the answering machine was flashing and the cats were demanding to be fed. One was always more urgent than the other, so it was a few minutes before he pressed the button to play back his messages. There were three of them.
‘Ben, it’s Matt. Give me a call.’
The first one was a very short message, but it made Cooper frown. His brother didn’t usually call him unless it was really necessary. In fact, Matt was always scrupulous about not phoning his mobile because he knew he used it for work. He supposed he’d have to call back and see what was wrong. But there were two more messages to listen to yet.
‘Ben. Matt. Give me a call as soon as you can. It’s important.’
Now Cooper began to feel uneasy. He pressed the button for the third message.
‘Ben, please give me a call. It’s very important.’ Then a pause. ‘It’s about Mum.’
Turning her Peugeot from Castleton Road into Grosvenor Avenue, Diane Fry finally pulled up at the kerb outside number 12. The house had once been solid and prosperous, just one detached Victorian villa in a tree-lined street. Its front door nestled in mock porticos, and the bedsits on the top floor were reached only by hidden servants’ staircases. But now most of the occupants were students at the High Peak College campus on the west side of town.
Fry often found her flat depressing, especially when it was empty. But she’d found Wardlow depressing, too. The very ordinariness of the place had made the calls from the phone box near the church seem even more disturbing.
Though Wardlow had been bad enough, at least it wasn’t the real back of beyond, the area they called the Dark Peak. Up there was only desolation – bleak, empty moorlands with nothing to redeem them. She recalled the road sign she’d seen last time she was there: sheep for 7 miles. Seven miles. That was the distance all the way across Birmingham from Chelmsley Wood to Chad Valley, taking in a population of about a million people. But here in Derbyshire you could find seven miles of nothing. That just about summed it up.
She’d transferred from the West Midlands as an outsider, the new girl who had to prove herself. It had been a struggle at times, just as she’d expected. But she’d been focused, and she’d worked hard. And now she got a lot of respect, though it was mostly from people she despised.
Fry went to the window, thinking she’d heard a car in the street. But she could see no vehicles, not even pedestrians passing on their way home for the night. All she could see out there was Edendale.
No, wait. There was someone. Two figures parting on the corner, so close to the edge of her field of view that she had to press her forehead to the window pane to see them. A second later, one of the figures came into focus, walking towards the house. Angie.
Fry pulled away from the window before she was seen, and went into the kitchen. Two minutes later, she heard Angie’s key in the lock.
‘Hi, Sis.’
‘Hi. Had a good day?’
‘Sure.’
‘What have you been doing?’
Angie had that secret little smile on her face as she took off her denim jacket. It was hard for Diane to know how to feel towards her sister. She knew she ought to be glad that Angie looked so much better than when she first moved in. Her skin was less pallid now, her eyes not quite so shadowed, her wrists and shoulders less painfully thin and bony. Anyone who didn’t know them might not be able to guess which sister was the recovering heroin addict.
Yet Diane was unable to suppress a resentment that was there every day now, barely below the surface of their relationship. No sooner had she been reunited with Angie than her sister had started to drift away from her again, and this time it seemed more personal. Would it have been different if she’d found Angie herself, without the interference of Ben Cooper? She would never know.
‘Actually, I’ve got myself a job,’ said Angie.
‘What?’
‘Did you think I was going to sponge off you for ever, Di? I’m going to pay you some rent.’
Angie kicked off her shoes and collapsed on the settee. Diane realized she was hovering in the doorway like a disapproving parent, so she perched on the edge of an armchair.
‘That’s great,’ she said. ‘What sort of job?’
There was that smile again. Angie felt among the cushions for the remote and switched on the TV. ‘I’m going to work in a bar.’
‘You mean you’re going to serve behind a bar,’ said Diane carefully.
Angie looked at her, and laughed at her expression. ‘What did you think, I was going to be a lap dancer or something? Do they have Spearmint Rhino in Edendale?’
Diane didn’t laugh. She tried to force herself to relax. ‘What pub are you going to work in?’
‘The Feathers. Do you know it?’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘I’ve done a bit of barmaid work before, so I’ll be fine. A few tips, and I’ll even have some spending money. Aren’t you pleased, Sis?’
In her head, Diane was running through the wording of Police Regulations. Regulation 7 restricted the business interests of police officers and any members of their family living with them, including brothers and sisters.
‘As long as you’re not going to be a licensee, or I’d have to get permission from the Chief Constable.’
She tried to say it lightly, but Angie flicked off the TV and stared at her in horror.
‘You’ve got to be bloody joking.’
‘No.’
‘Your chuffing Chief Constable can’t run my life. So what if he didn’t give permission? What does he think he could do to me?’
‘Nothing,’ said Diane. ‘But I’d have to resign from the force.’
‘Oh, tough.’
Angie bounced back on to her feet and picked up her shoes as she went towards her bedroom. Diane began to get unreasonably angry.
‘Angie –’
Her sister turned for a second before she disappeared. ‘Quite honestly, Di, resigning from that bloody job of yours would be the best thing you could do. And then maybe I’d get back the sister I remember.’
Diane remained staring at the door as it slammed behind Angie. She didn’t know what else to think, except that she’d never got a chance to ask who the man was she’d seen on the corner of the street.
Ben Cooper felt as though he’d been walking through hospital corridors for half an hour. He was sure he’d turned left at a nurses’ station a hundred yards back, yet here was another one that looked exactly the same. Had hospitals always been so anonymous, or was it just a result of the latest improvements at Edendale General?
And then, in the corridor ahead, he saw a familiar figure wearing worn denim jeans and a thick sweater with holes at the elbows. Cooper smiled with relief. His brother Matt looked totally out of place in a hospital. For a start, Matt was built on a different scale to the nurses who passed him. His hands and shoulders looked awkward and too big, as if he might break anything fragile he came near. He wasn’t a man you’d want to let loose among hypodermic needles and intravenous drips.
He also looked far too healthy to be inside a hospital, even as a visitor. Constant exposure to the sun and weather had given a deep, earthy colouring to his skin that contrasted with the clinical white, the pale pastels of the newly painted