Dancing With the Virgins Read Online Free PDF Page A

hair.
    ‘ We've got to keep the road open,' said the sergeant importantly as he passed below them.
    ‘ Yeah. You're doing a great job. We can see that.'
    ‘ Control reckons the cavalry's on the way, Inspector. They tracked down a couple of your lot at the rugby match. ’
    Fry knew exactly what that meant. The rugby match was where Ben Cooper would have been with his friend, Todd Weenink, and no doubt DS Dave Rennie, too. Cooper wasn't a rugby-playing man himself. From her own experience, Fry reckoned he was more likely to be taking out the half-time oranges and cleaning the players' boots, generally getting in the way and making helpful suggestions. But he would have been at the match to support his colleagues. Oh yes, Ben Cooper was a great one for supporting his friends.
    ‘ Oh, and you'll be pleased to know our lads won too!' called the sergeant .
    Fry blew through her teeth and jammed her hands into the pockets of her coat, squaring her shoulders like someone bracing herself for a fight. Rennie, Cooper, and Weenink. The dream team. Just what E Division needed to stamp on a spate of attacks on women .
    At last it looked as though someone had located another place to park. Radios crackled, the sergeant shouted, and cars began to move off, flashing their headlights and spinning their wheels dramatically on the grass as they went. But as the patrols and vans made space, another car arrived. It was an unmarked Mondeo — a private car, not a police vehicle. The doors popped open and a warm fug seemed to ooze out into the evening chill. A voice was raised in complaint from the back seat.
    ‘ I can't believe we left those uniformed bastards with all the beer,' it said .
    Fry recognized DC Weenink immediately. He was damp-haired and pink-faced, and his voice sounded petulant, like an overgrown child. She watched in dis gust as he poked bare, muscular legs out of the car door and struggled to pull his trousers on over his jockey shorts. Parts of his anatomy bulged dangerously from his underclothes, and the buttons of his shirt were unfastened over his hairy chest. Even from several yards away, Fry knew that his breath smelled of alcohol .
    She watched DS Rennie get out of the driver's seat. But no Ben Cooper. Suddenly, Fry felt more cheerful .
    Her shoulders relaxed, her lips formed a contemptuous smile.
    ‘ Well, if that's the cavalry,' she said, 'my money's on the Indians. ’
    DI Hitchens laughed. Weenink heard the laugh, and he looked around for its source. He grinned up at Fry, with his zip still open, his hands pressed round his crotch, the position of them emphasizing rather than concealing the bulge in his shorts.
    ‘ Excuse me, Sergeant,' he said. 'Can you use me at all? ’
    Fry stared at him, but Weenink's grin only grew broader, until it became a smirk. She turned to stride away from the road. She had no time to waste on petty irritations - not when a woman's entire life had already been wasted up there on the moor. She had seen enough wasted lives, and her own had almost been one of them. But not any more .
    *
    Ben Cooper took a swig from his bottle, conserving the beer carefully, anxious about drinking too much. He didn't want to become a solitary drinker, though the temptation was strong .
    A few minutes ago, he had rung Control to find out what was happening. They said the body of a woman had been found on Ringham Moor, fifteen miles south of Edendale. A suspected murder. The control room operator didn't need to mention the other attack that had taken place not a mile away from the same spot six weeks before. In that case, the victim had survived - just about .
    Now Cooper's mind was no longer with him as he sat in the sweaty rugby club bar. It was elsewhere, drifting across the moors towards a flutter of tape and the flash ing lights, the sound of urgent voices, and the scents and the electric crackle in the air that never failed to give him a buzz of excitement. That sense of satisfaction from taking his