Dancing With the Virgins. Stephen Booth
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.’
They passed a large field containing a herd of black and white cattle and approached Ringham Edge Farm down a steep, narrow lane constricted between stone walls. The farm buildings were built mostly of the dark local gritstone, and the house itself had small, deeply-set windows that must let in little light. An extra shadow was thrown on the house by a large modern shed some distance from the track. Close to the shed stood the burnt-out shell of what looked like a Mitsubishi pick-up, the paint stripped from its bodywork and the interior of the cab blackened. Many farmers had the habit of letting all sorts of junk accumulate around their farm buildings.
Owen glanced at Cooper. ‘Would it be best if I talked to him?’
‘Leach? Is he likely to be difficult?’
‘He can be. He needs handling right. Sometimes you have to let people think they’re getting their own way.’
‘Even when they aren’t?’
‘Well. Sometimes. You do know, don’t you …’
‘What?’
‘It was Warren Leach’s wife Yvonne who found that other woman a few weeks ago.’
‘Of course – Maggie Crew.’
‘She got as far as one of the fields at Ringham Edge. Yvonne Leach came across her lying unconscious under a wall. Leach himself just reckoned it was a nuisance, I think. It kept him away from his work for a bit. But this old quarry road is mainly used as a footpath now. It’s a public right of way, and it runs right through the farm. When you have strangers walking past your door all the time, you can soon get to see them as an irritation. Some visitors think farmers are there as a public service, for providing toilets and telephones, or for pulling their cars out of ditches with their tractors. I can’t blame Warren – not really.’
When Owen Fox and Ben Cooper pulled up in the Land Rover, they found two boys in a brightly lit byre. They were fussing over a Jersey heifer calf with huge eyes and long black lashes. The animal stood patiently, twitching her damp nostrils with pleasure as she was brushed on each flank until her red coat gleamed. One of the boys reached out to stroke the calf’s muzzle, and she responded with a rasp of a plump tongue across his hand which made the boy smile with pleasure. Behind them, a wooden board was decorated with red and blue rosettes with long ribbons.
‘Is this the calf that won at Bakewell Show?’ asked Owen.
The boys looked uncertain what to say. Maybe they had been told not to talk to strangers, thought Cooper. But the Ranger wasn’t really a stranger, was he? He had been to the farm before; he knew Warren Leach. It was part of the Area Ranger’s job to maintain good relations with the farmers and landowners on his patch.
‘Yeah, this is her. She’s called Doll,’ said the older boy.
‘You’re Will, aren’t you?’ said Owen. ‘I can’t remember your brother’s name.’
‘He’s Dougie.’
Owen walked slowly towards the calf, hushing her quietly as she shied away and rolled her eyes at him. The boys held on to the halter nervously. But the animal calmed down when Owen began to talk to her, stroking her nose, gently following the lie of her coat along the side of her muzzle. He rubbed her shoulder to feel the firmness of the muscle and ran his hand down her spine. The calf relaxed under his touch.
‘She’s a beauty, lads. In superb condition. She’s a real credit to you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Will. Dougie appeared to be about to add something, but changed his mind.
Both boys seemed shy, but the younger one was particularly uncommunicative. Cooper wasn’t used to silent children. There were several kids of Will and Dougie’s age in his own family – nephews and nieces and second cousins. But none of them was so quiet. They were too noisy, if anything. These days, children were no longer seen and not heard. It was when you could neither see nor hear them that you began to worry, if you were a parent. That was when they were at risk.
But these two were different. They had a reticence about them, a watchfulness that bordered on hostility, as if they had learned to be afraid of visitors.
‘Will you be showing her again next year?’ asked Owen.
That seemed to have been the wrong thing to say. The boys’ faces fell, and Dougie looked as though he might cry.
‘Your dad will take you to the show, won’t he?’
Will shook his head. Now Cooper started to feel uncomfortable. ‘Where is your dad?’ he said.
‘Up at the workshop.’ Will pointed to the back of the house. The two boys looked relieved when they walked away and followed the roadway to a yard, where a metallic clanging came from a shed. Owen stuck his head through the doorway.
‘Warren? Good evening.’
Warren Leach looked up from a bench lit by a dim work-lamp. He was a man with almost no neck. His torso, thick and solid, without a single curve, erupted into bulging shoulders with trapezius muscles that almost reached the line of his jaw. He was wearing blue overalls, with a wide leather belt strapped round his waist.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said gruffly. ‘It never rains but it pours round here, does it? What do you want?’
‘Well, it might have been a friendly social call,’ said Owen.
Leach snorted. ‘Oh aye. Did you come past the shippon?’
‘We did.’
‘I suppose you saw those lads of mine. Are they still messing with that bloody animal?’
‘They look as though they’re doing a grand job with her, Warren. She’s in fine condition.’
‘Oh aye. Fine. And so she should be. The animal gets spoiled rotten. She’s fed better than any of us.’
The farmer was fiddling with a steel coupling pin from a trailer’s towing bracket. The pin trailed a short length of chain, which he swung irritably between his fingers.
‘What’s up now then, Ranger?’
‘Warren, the police need to get access for their vehicles up through here for a while.’
‘Oh?’
‘On account of the woman killed up there. You know about that.’
Leach shrugged. ‘It’s no business of mine.’
‘It’s your land, Warren,’ said Fox patiently.
‘Is it part of the access agreement then? Some tourist gets herself done in and I have to put up with this lot roaring backwards and forwards over my land like maniacs?’ Leach jabbed a finger in Cooper’s direction, effortlessly identifying him as what he was. ‘Well, it must have been in the small print, Ranger, because I missed it.’
‘Can you leave that top gate open for the police vehicles to get on to the moor, please?’
‘Leave it open? Why? They can open and close a gate like anyone else, can’t they? Or have coppers lost the use of their hands as well as their feet these days?’
‘It doesn’t do to make the police think you’re being obstructive,’ said Owen.
‘They can think what the hell they like.’
Cooper stayed silent, ignoring the aggressive glare. He was well used to it from the yobbos of Edendale. The only surprise was to see it in a middle-aged Dales farmer. But it was best to let Owen Fox deal with it – it was a chance for him to use his Ranger diplomacy.
‘I