Lost River bcadf-10 Read online

  The view from Beacon Hill would be quite different now. There were more glass towers in the city centre, with the old landmark of the Rotunda almost obscured by bigger, taller, newer buildings. Most of the Longbridge car plant had disappeared completely since the collapse of MG Rover and the arrival of the Chinese. The results of large-scale demolition must have left a huge hole in the landscape of south Birmingham. She imagined that loss would be all too obvious from the Lickeys.

  She checked out the bathroom and the shower in her room, turned the TV on and off with the remote. She felt quite at home in an anonymous hotel. That was what hotels were all about, making you feel at home. Being alone among strangers was comfortable. There were no painful reminders. The stresses of life were suspended, and you could lie back on your bed, rootless and free. A bed that had been made by someone else, too. Wonderful.

  Stretching out on the king-size bed, Fry decided she ought to face up to what she would go through during the next few days. She didn’t want anything to come as a shock.

  Gareth Blake had explained it all to her that day in Branagh’s office. Most of it she didn’t need explained, in theory. But it was different to hear it spelled out, when you knew the ‘victim’ they kept referring to was yourself.

  ‘Diane, we’ll understand if you say you’ve moved on and you don’t want to testify. But there are things we can do. A victim can agree to interview without any commitment to give evidence.’

  ‘Don’t keep calling me the victim.’

  Tm sorry, I’m sorry. Look, you might not be sure about this until you re-read your own statement. That’s often what we find. A woman has tried to forget the incident, put the trauma behind her — of course. But then she goes back and reads the statement she made at the time, and she changes her mind. She agrees to go ahead and give evidence in court.’

  Fry remembered Branagh’s face had been impassive during the conversation. For once, she wasn’t weighing in to put pressure on. And she recalled thinking there must be a reason for that. Everything Branagh did had a reason.

  Fry had wiped her palms on the edge of her jacket, then tried to disguise the gesture. It was too much of a giveaway.

  Blake had leaned forward earnestly.

  ‘In court, you can have a screen, if you want. So that the accused can’t see you and you can’t see him. We often take victims into court to show them where they’ll give evidence from, and where everyone sits. We might not need to do that for you, obviously. But you understand what I’m saying? We bend over backwards to make it easier.’

  ‘Easier?’

  ‘Less difficult, then.’

  She ought to be better prepared than the average victim. At least she knew the jargon. Like every other area of policing, the investigation of rape was littered with impenetrable acronyms. Victims were dealt with by an STO and an ISVA. A specially trained officer and an independent sexual violence advisor. A case file would contain a ROTI, a record of taped interview, in preparation for the EAH, an Early Administrative Hearing. For a member of the general public, the terminology could be baffling.

  The first stage of the actual court process would be a committal hearing at a magistrates’ court. She would not have to attend that, as her statement would be enough. The case could then proceed to crown court, where the second stage would be the trial, with a judge and a jury, a prosecution barrister to go through her evidence, another for the defence to challenge what she said.

  If her attacker was found guilty or pleaded guilty, the judge would be given an impact statement before sentence, to explain how the attack had affected her life. Nothing was held back.

  ‘In every case I’ve dealt with since joining the cold case unit, victims have been delighted to be approached. They say that a conviction brings closure, often after many years of torment.’

  ‘But you do need consent to go ahead.’

  And Blake had hesitated.

  ‘In almost one hundred per cent of cases.’

  Well, the treatment of rape had changed in the last couple of decades. The West Midlands had a dedicated facility, the Rowan Centre, where victims could pass on information without giving a name or address, or worrying about making a statement. That option had never been available to her.

  Throughout this process, she must keep reminding herself one thing. She wasn’t part of the investigating team for this enquiry. On the contrary, she was the IP, the Injured Party. That was how she would be referred to in the official police documents. She was the IP.

  When she left the hotel, Fry heard music coming from the direction of The Water’s Edge. She bought herself a sandwich in Baguette du Monde near the multi-storey car park, and idly studied the programme for the Crescent Theatre while she ate it. Something is rotten in an upper-crust Danish family gathered to celebrate the 60th birthday of their wealthy patriarch. The occasion descends into nightmare when the eldest son accuses his father of sexual abuse. That would be a comedy, then. She might give it a miss.

  The Water’s Edge was busy with people. The development had formed a complex of bridges where three canals met, connecting Brindleyplace to the ICC and NIA. Narrowboats were moored to the towpath, one of them converted into a cafe. The music she’d heard turned out to be a jive group on the bandstand, playing to customers eating outside at the restaurants. Their sign said Jive Romeros.

  It was funny how canals had become a decorative feature. They had been such a part of the industrial revolution, yet they were surviving the wholesale demolition of the factories they’d once served. They were like all those Victorian pubs, preserved in the middle of modern office developments and retail parks.

  She could see some of the city centre’s glass towers from here. Most prominent among them was the Beetham Tower on Holloway Circus. The huge glass panels in its upper levels made the building look as if its walls had been blown away in a bomb blast, exposing the hidden lives of the people behind them.

  A full-scale crown court trial would mean expensive defence barristers being shipped into the city. Would they take accommodation at Brindleyplace? No, she guessed not. They would stay at the Radisson SAS in the Beetham Tower, and drink downstairs at the Filini Bar.

  Around the corner from 3 Brindleyplace, Fry could see the entrance to the National Sea Life Centre, a fan-shaped building backing on to the canal. It boasted a transparent walk-through underwater tunnel, yet it was about as far from the sea as you could get in the UK.

  She thought of all the people she’d dealt with as a police officer over the years. All the victims, all the families. And all the children, of course. Particularly the children. There were some victims she’d let down, when she ought to have been able to help them. Everyone said you shouldn’t allow any of that to get to you, that you should just let it go and move on to the next case, to another victim looking for justice, needing your help. But sometimes it wasn’t so easy.

  And she thought of all the times she’d observed the behaviour of victims and felt a lack of sympathy at their weakness, their hesitation when faced with a decision. All the times she’d wanted to tell them that it wasn’t as bad as all that.

  Fry had so often seen people going into court to confront their past. The worst part of the process was waiting in the witness room, and the long walk down the corridor to take the stand. She’d watched people taking that walk. It might only be a few yards, but when you were going to face your own demons, it could seem like a million lonely miles.

  ‘So what do you say, Diane?’

  ‘I need time.’

  ‘Of course. All the time you want.’

  For herself, Fry knew that the long walk down that corridor would be the most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life.

  Cooper stopped a few miles out of Ashbourne and pulled off the A515 into a car park serving the Tissington Trail, close to the village of Alsop. Dovedale was just over the hill to the west — the Milldale end of the valley, up past the boardwalks beyond Reynard’s Cave and the weirs under Raven’s To
r.

  He couldn’t put off reading the witness statements any longer. And he was afraid of being distracted when he got back to the office, too caught up in other things, all those unavoidable demands on his time.

  Ideally, the statements ought to be read on the ground, in Dovedale itself, so he could picture where the witnesses were standing. But it would take too long right now to battle his way in and out of the dale against the traffic, and mingle with the crowds. That would have to wait for another time.

  The statements were all pretty brief. The one thing that became clear was that no one had seen everything. Some witnesses recalled seeing the dog go into the river, but not the girl. Others had seen Emily and her brother playing on the bank, throwing sticks for Buster. Then they’d looked away, absorbed in their own concerns, until all the shouting began.

  A few members of the public stated that they had actually seen Emily run into the water, then fall and bang her head on a rock. He could see why Sergeant Wragg felt the results of the interviews were conclusive.

  But Cooper was bothered by the wording of these statements. ‘Yes, I saw the little girl fall and bang her head.’ ‘She was knocked over by the dog. The rock struck her on the side of the head.’ ‘She couldn’t catch the dog. I saw her slip and float downstream towards the rocks.’ One lady believed there had been a whole crowd of children and dogs in the water, too many for her to be able to distinguish one little girl in a green summer dress. Meanwhile, her friend had seen the girl distinctly, but swore the dress was blue.

  All of these people had been within a few hundreds yards of the incident. Strange that none of them had noticed the child’s parents. How odd that none of them had seen what Cooper saw — the man standing on the bank, his hands raised, fingers dripping water. Robert Nield was a striking enough figure at any time. You’d think he would have been observed by at least one of these eyewitnesses.

  But perhaps some of them had seen him. Possibly, they had just never been asked.

  Murfin was waiting impatiently in the CID room, looking anxiously over his shoulder as if he expected the Spanish Inquisition at any moment.

  ‘It’s all right, Gavin, chill out.’

  ‘I’ve had Luke Irvine out on the Devonshire Estate,’ said Murfin, ‘to see if he can sniff out anything more about Michael Lowndes.’

  ‘That’s great, Gavin.’

  ‘I’m glad you appreciate it. If the information checks out, we should be able to have another go at putting surveillance on him this week.’

  ‘And what about the sex offenders?’

  Murfin sighed. ‘ViSOR print-outs are on your desk.’

  Murfin was chewing as usual, but he was managing to do it with an air of dissatisfaction. He had that sort of face, one that had sagged enough with age and misuse to enable him to carry off two expressions at once. His eyes looked merely quizzical, but his jowls were resentful.

  Cooper flicked through the file, not reading the details at first, but looking at the photographs. The Police National Computer was linked to the database for ViSOR, the Violent and Sex Offender Register. Print-outs from the database gave him name and address records, photographs, risk assessments, and offenders’ modus operandi. Sex offenders on the register were obliged to confirm their registration annually, failure being subject to a penalty of up to five years imprisonment.

  And Murfin was right — there weren’t many of them, just a dozen or so. Some of the individuals could immediately be discounted on grounds of age. How did you get yourself on the Sex Offenders’ Register at the age of sixteen? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Then Cooper stopped turning the pages. A face was looking out at him, the usual full face and profile shots taken in a police custody suite on arrest. The face itself was unremarkable. It was the representation of a middle-aged man with receding hair and a hint of grey stubble, a man who could pass unnoticed in any street. Cooper realized it was the eyes he remembered. They were calculating eyes, watchful and suspicious of the world. In some circumstances, they might look like the eyes of a predator.

  ‘Sean Deacon,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Murfin. ‘A nasty piece of work. He has a record of violence towards children. His partner kicked him out when she found out he was physically abusing her two children.’

  ‘How old were they?’

  ‘Four and six,’ said Murfin.

  The address given for Deacon was in Wirksworth, about ten miles northeast of Ashbourne, on the other side of Carsington Water. So Murfin had extended the search criteria anyway, and had pulled out Sean Deacon at the second attempt.

  ‘Does he have a job at the moment? Where does he work?’

  ‘At the Grand Hotel. He’s a kitchen worker.’

  ‘What — here in Edendale?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Cooper had an image of a man slouching from an interview room to a cell in the custody suite at Edendale, a man who turned to look at him over his shoulder as he passed. It was that tilt of the head he’d recognized in Dovedale, a face half turned away in shadow, but the angle of a cheek and the slope of a shoulder were distinctive. You might change your face, but it was difficult to hide the way you moved.

  ‘I think I was involved in an arrest,’ he said. ‘Or at least an interview.’

  ‘You have a good memory.’

  ‘For faces, yes.’

  ‘Handy.’

  ‘If he’s on the register, he must have been convicted under the Sex Offenders Act since 1997.’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was later convicted for attempting to abduct a seven-year-old from a park in Matlock. He was given four years in prison, spent thirty months inside, came out on licence, and now he’s on the Sex Offenders’ Register.’

  ‘And he was watching children in Dovedale on Monday,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Is this him, then?’

  ‘Yes, this is him.’

  Cooper was feeling quite shaky now. It would pass, he knew. If he gave it a few hours, and got a good night’s sleep, he’d be absolutely fine, just as he’d told Superintendent Branagh.

  Then he thought about going home to Welbeck Street. And it occurred to him that home, on his own, might be the place where he would feel worst.

  At the end of the morning, he walked out of E Divisional Headquarters and crossed the road, passing the back of the main stand at Edendale FC. The last match of the UniBond League season had been played a few weeks ago, but it wouldn’t be long before the preseason friendlies started at the beginning of July. Some Yorkshire side from Sheffield or Barnsley would be the first visitors, he’d heard. Then a local derby with Buxton or Matlock.

  He didn’t follow the Edendale soccer that closely, but it was useful to be aware of big matches from a policing point of view. Also, it helped to know when you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere to park your car on a Saturday.

  Liz Petty had dashed over from Buxton, still in her blue sweater, and met him for lunch in May’s Cafe off West Street, in a lane running steeply downhill to Edendale’s Clappergate shopping centre.

  He’d first met her when she was a SOCO in E Division, and they’d abseiled into a disused quarry together looking for evidence. She’d been bundled up in overalls and a water-proof jacket then, with a red helmet pulled over her eyes. But he remembered a conspiratorial smile as she came alongside him on the face of a quarry, the smile shared by rock climbers. Her face had been flushed with cold and excitement, and her eyes shone with pleasure from under her helmet. That was the moment he realized he wanted to know her better.

  Things had moved slowly after that, as these things did. It was only on his birthday one year that he began to see their relationship differently, when among the cards left on his desk was one from Petty, signed ‘Hugs, Liz’. Their initial date had followed soon after that, dinner at the Raj Mahal in Edendale, and their first chaste kiss, her skin cool and slightly damp from the rain.

  He really cared for her now, and he’d always taken it for granted that he would get
married and settle down one, day, probably have a couple of kids, just like Matt. Was Liz the one he would be married to when that happened?

  ‘Acting DS?’ she said. ‘Wow. But a permanent promotion would be great.’

  ‘Yes, of course it would.’

  ‘That would help a lot.’

  Cooper sensed there was something else that she wasn’t saying. One of those female subtexts that he was supposed to pick up on, a message he should understand without being told. What could it be?

  Liz glanced at him, and looked away. And he felt as though he’d just failed an important test.

  8

  Waiting in the lobby of West Midlands Police headquarters in Colmore Circus, Fry picked up a newspaper off the table. The Birmingham Mail. She hadn’t seen the paper for years, in fact never read a local newspaper at all now.

  She found herself drawn to the personal ads. To her mind, they seemed to give a more honest glimpse into people’s real lives than any of the journalists’ stories elsewhere in the paper. As she read the ads, with their sometimes cryptic wording, she recalled an Agatha Christie play that had once been staged by the local amateur dramatic society in Dudley. A Murder is Announced. Why had she been there? She’d been dragged along against her will, she imagined. Maybe some friend or relative had been in the cast. All she remembered was the bit about a silly advert in the personal column, giving the time and date and place of a murder. Then there was some business with the lights going out and shots being fired, and a body on the floor.

  She stared out of the plate glass on to Colmore Circus, a stream of traffic going past into the city. This wasn’t Little Paddocks in Chipping Cleghorn, and she couldn’t expect to see Colonel Archie or Miss Letitia walking in through the French windows. There was no vicarage here that hadn’t been turned into student bedsits. And no village shop in the shadow of the mosque.