LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘He wouldn’t tell you if he met somebody while he was walking the dog?’

      ‘No, he wouldn’t see any reason to.’

      ‘But since then? Since he’s known that Laura Vernon was killed down there? If he remembered seeing somebody, might he not mention it?’

      ‘Not to me,’ said Gwen simply.

      ‘I see. Did your husband go out again later, Mrs Dickinson? After his meal?’

      ‘He usually goes down to the Drover,’ she said.

      ‘And that night, did he go out as usual?’

      ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

      ‘What time would that be?’

      ‘I can’t remember,’ said Gwen.

      ‘After seven o’clock?’

      ‘Oh yes, he wouldn’t have finished his tea before that.’

      ‘After eight o’clock then?’

      ‘I can’t really say. It might have been.’

      Cooper heard the aggressive tone in his own voice and hesitated, seeing Gwen begin to tremble. He felt sorry for her and didn’t want to increase her distress. She was only one of those innocent people who got caught up in something they didn’t understand. He thought of his own mother, for whom things had got too much. He didn’t want to be even partly responsible for pushing someone else towards the edge.

      ‘Just a few more questions, Mrs Dickinson, then I’ll leave you in peace. I know it must be difficult for you.’

      ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Those other men frightened me, but I don’t mind if it’s you.’

      He smiled, touched by the old woman’s faith, but not sure whether he could live up to it.

      ‘I wonder whether Mr Dickinson would have taken his dog with him when he went out the second time? When he went to the pub?’

      ‘Jess? Oh yes, he doesn’t go anywhere without her.’ Gwen took a deep breath. ‘Are they saying he met the Mount girl down there?’

      He was surprised at the question, and wondered why it had come into Gwen Dickinson’s mind. He deliberately avoided an answer.

      ‘You keep calling her the Mount girl, Mrs Dickinson. But her name’s Vernon.’

      ‘Yes, I know that. The Mount is where she lives, isn’t it?’

      She nodded her head towards the window. But all that could be seen was the garden, the edge of the trees, and the sunlit hillside beyond.

      ‘Do you know Mr and Mrs Vernon, then?’

      ‘They’re comers-in.’

      ‘Is that yes or no?’

      Gwen threw out her hands. Cooper knew the meaning of that gesture. It indicated that you could never really know comers-in, not in the proper sense. You might say hello to them in the street or in the shop, let them buy you a drink at the pub, or even share a pew with them at St Edwin’s these days. But you wouldn’t ever know them – not like you knew the people who had always lived in the village, whose parents and grandparents and great-grandparents you knew, and whose grandparents had known your great-grandparents. Many of them might well have been first or second cousins to each other. Those were the people you knew.

      ‘We were never introduced,’ said Gwen. ‘They weren’t known round here. Not really.’ She peered anxiously at him to be sure he understood.

      ‘Of course.’

      Yes, you only really knew people when you knew everything about them. You needed to know it all – from the exact moment they had been conceived in the long grass at the back of the village hall to the first word they had spoken, and the contents of their fifth-form school reports. You needed to know what size of shoes they wore, how much money they owed the credit card company, when their last bout of chickenpox had been, and which foot had the ingrowing toenail. You had to know who their first sexual encounter had been with, what brand of condom they had used, and whether the experience had been satisfactory. Now that was knowing somebody.

      ‘But I have seen them,’ admitted Gwen. ‘The Mount lot.’

      ‘What about the girl? Laura?’

      ‘She never went to school in the village – she was already too old when they came. She didn’t even go to the big school in Edendale. Private, she was. That place out at Wardworth, what do they call it?’

      ‘High Carrs.’

      ‘That’s right. They always took her out by car every morning and back in the afternoon. At weekends they were always away out somewhere, shopping in Sheffield and the like. Riding lessons and I don’t know what. She never had anything to do with any of the other girls in the village, nor any of the boys either, though plenty would have liked to know her better, I don’t doubt. They kept her shut up in that place, or well away from here. So she was never really part of the village then, was she? Not her, nor that brother of hers either. They couldn’t be, not like that.’

      ‘And how well do you think your husband knew Laura?’

      Gwen flared up suddenly, her lip lifting to reveal her false teeth in something that was almost a snarl. Cooper bit off too large a piece of biscuit and nearly choked.

      ‘Are you sure you’ve been listening?’

      ‘Of course I have.’

      ‘Didn’t I say he never tells me anything? How would I know if he knew her? She’s never been here, she’s never been to the cottage. So how would I know?’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I’ll have to ask him myself, of course.’

      ‘You think he’ll tell you anything?’

      ‘It’s in his own interests. It won’t help to be uncooperative with us.’

      ‘Try telling him that. I wish you luck with it.’

      She relaxed into her chair, calming down again as quickly as she had flared. She looked up at him coyly, as if ashamed at her show of temper.

      ‘I heard he had a bit of a disagreement with my bosses,’ said Cooper, probing gently at something that was intriguing him.

      ‘And thought he was very clever doing it,’ Gwen said. She sighed and put down her cup half drunk. ‘He always was contrary. A stubborn man. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been like that. When I was a girl, it was one of the things I liked about him. I thought it was a man’s pride then. Now … Well, like I say, he’s stubborn. A right awkward old bugger, Harry Dickinson. Everybody knows that.’

      From the way the old woman spoke, it seemed to Cooper that it was the stubbornness that was still, really, the thing that she liked most about Harry. Now that the physical attraction had gone and the romance had long since settled into a numb familiarity, there was still a quality in her husband that could make her voice soften and her pale eyes shift out of focus, as if she were looking beyond the walls of the cottage to the shadows of a happier past. Their marriage might not be happy, but surely something else had taken the place of happiness – a sort of stability, a necessary balance. The old couple were like two of those ancient rocks propped against each other on Raven’s Side – jagged and weathered, their hard surfaces gouging into each other, but worn to each other’s shape by the years. But if one of those rocks should crumble, there was no future for the other.

      ‘Of course, he thinks more of those pals of his than he does of me, these days,’ said Gwen. ‘Sam Beeley and Wilford Cutts.’

      ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Cooper.

      ‘That’s what Helen says as well. But I’m not sure. Not at all.’

      ‘He’s

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