LITMIR.BIZ

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grab at her hands and face from the darkness, throwing her thoughts into turmoil and her body into immobility. Desperately, she tried to count the number of dark forms that loomed around her, mere smudges of silhouettes that crept ever nearer, reaching out to nuzzle her neck with their teeth and squeeze the air from her throat.

      And then she seemed to hear a voice in the darkness. A familiar voice, coarse and slurring in a Birmingham accent. ‘It’s a copper,’ it said. Taunting laughter moving in the shadows. The same dark, stained pillars of menace all around, whichever way she turned. ‘A copper. She’s a copper.’

      

      The light fell on her face, blinding her. She knew there was a person behind the light, but she couldn’t make out his eyes. She tensed automatically, her hands closing into fists, the first two knuckles protruding, with her thumbs locked over her fingers, and her legs moving to take her balance. Concentrate. Pour the adrenaline into the muscles. Get ready to strike.

      ‘Are you OK?’

      A concerned voice, northern vowels. Whispering. Unthreatening. Fry let the muscles relax slowly, coming back to an awareness of the woods, to the fact she was in Derbyshire, many miles from Birmingham. The reality of the horror was months behind her, and only the wounds in her mind were still raw and terrible where they were exposed to the cold wind of memory. She took a breath, felt her lungs trembling and ragged.

      Cooper leaned towards her face, so they were only a few inches apart. ‘Are you OK, Diane?’

      Instinctively, she reached out a hand to touch him, like a child seeking affection, a protective embrace. She felt his solidity and his reassuring warmth, and closed her eyes to grasp at the elusive sensations of tenderness and affection. The feeling of another human body so close was unfamiliar. It was a long time since she had wanted someone to hold her and comfort her, a lifetime since there had been someone to wipe away the tears that she now felt gathering in the corners of her eyes.

      ‘What’s wrong?’

      Fry pulled back her hand, blinked her eyes, drew herself upright. Control and concentration, that’s what she needed. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs, forcing her heartbeat to slow down. Control and concentration.

      ‘I’m fine, Ben. What did you see?’

      ‘He’s in there, all right. He’s got a candle lit, and I could see his face in a sort of half-profile.’

      ‘You’re sure?’

      ‘It’s definitely him.’

      ‘What do we do now?’

      ‘Are you joking? We nick him.’

      Fry sighed. ‘All right. Let’s nick him then.’

      Cooper put his hand on her arm, and gave it a squeeze. She bit her lip at the friendly gesture, and firmly shook him off.

      ‘There’s just the one door, and there’s no lock on it,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in fast, one either side of him, take him by surprise. I’ll do the words. OK?’

      ‘Fine by me.’

      They approached the door, paused to look at each other. Cooper nodded, flicked the catch and kicked the door backwards on its hinges. He was in the hut fast, moving to his right, allowing Fry space to get alongside him.

      A young man was bending over a wooden table against the far side of the hut. A candle threw a fitful light on his face and cast his shadow on the opposite wall. There was an old chair and a small cupboard in the room, and even a worn carpet on the floor. But the hut smelled of earth and mouldy bread.

      Cooper began to reach for his warrant card, which was deep inside the inner pocket of his jacket.

      ‘Lee Sherratt? I’m a police officer.’

      Sherratt turned round, slowly and deliberately, and only then did Cooper see the gun. It came up in his hands as they lifted from the table, the barrel swinging outwards and upwards, with Sherratt’s fingers turning white where they gripped the stock, one index finger creeping towards the trigger guard, a blackened fingernail touching the steel of the trigger, applying the first pressure …

      Cooper stood numbed with surprise, his right hand pushed into his pocket, immobile. His mind had come to a halt, no instincts sprang up to tell him what to do. The last thing he had been expecting was that he would die here, in the poacher’s hut, on a threadbare carpet gritty with soil and fragments of stale food.

      Then Diane Fry came into view. She was moving at twice the speed of Sherratt. Her left foot lashed out in a straight-legged sideways kick that impacted with Sherratt’s wrist and knocked the rifle out of his hands towards the wall of the hut. Even before the gun had landed, she regained her footing, shifted her balance and was striking a closed-fist rising blow to his solar plexus. Sherratt folded backwards into the table, then collapsed face down on to the floor and vomited on the carpet. Fry stepped back to avoid the mess.

      ‘You don’t have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be given in evidence,’ she said.

      ‘Shit,’ said Cooper.

      Fry dug into her pockets and pulled out her kwik-cuffs and her mobile phone.

      ‘I suppose I could have called in first and waited for the back-up,’ she said. ‘But, like I said, there are times.’

       15

      ‘But where are they, sir?’

      ‘We don’t know exactly. Somewhere on the Pennine Way, we think.’

      ‘But that’s two hundred and fifty miles long.’

      ‘And there are twenty-two of them, apparently,’ said DCI Tailby. ‘And they’ve all got to be interviewed. Paul?’

      DI Hitchens was sitting next to Tailby at the head of the briefing room. He seemed to be moving into a central position again in the Vernon enquiry.

      ‘The hikers seen on the Eden Valley Trail are all students from Newcastle on a week’s walking holiday. Apparently, they stayed overnight on Saturday at the camping barn at Hathersage, intending to reach the start of the Pennine Way via Barber Booth sometime on Sunday. But nearly four days have elapsed, and we estimate they will be somewhere in West or North Yorkshire by now. The local police are trying to locate them for us.’

      Tailby nodded. ‘DI Hitchens is in charge of this line of enquiry. When the students are located, he will travel to Yorkshire to interview them, accompanied by DC Fry.’

      There was a faint trickle of comment, quickly hushed. Ben Cooper saw the DI look round and grin at Fry.

      ‘Mr and Mrs Vernon are coming in today to film their television appeal, which will be broadcast later,’ said Tailby. ‘We are, of course, hopeful of some results from the public.’ He smiled to himself as he said it – a small, self-mocking smile, as he thought of the phone calls that would certainly pour in from the cranks and the eccentrics, the over-zealous and the neurotic, the well-intentioned but mistaken, and the sad, sad cases desperate for a bit of attention. From among the hundreds there might, though, be one or two calls that would provide vital help.

      The DCI looked down at his checklist. ‘Have we anything on Daniel Vernon yet? Who’s on that?’

      A burly DC leaning against the side wall raised a hand in acknowledgement.

      ‘Yes, Weenink?’

      ‘I checked with his faculty at Exeter University. Vernon is about to start the second year of the political science course. It’s social dialectics this term, apparently. I always thought that was a sort of sexual disease.’ Weenink waited for the expected laughs, smirking as he thrust his hands into his pockets and slouched more casually. ‘Term doesn’t start for another two weeks, but the new intake, the first years, arrive before that to register and find their way about,

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