Lost River (21 page)

Cooper wondered whether Sean Deacon was flying now, or falling. Was his spirit whispering across the sky, somewhere high above those night-time hills? Or was that Deacon’s voice he could hear, screaming faintly in the dark as he plunged into a deeper blackness?

Flying, or falling?

Well, perhaps it was all the same, in the end.

A 1920s red-brick pub stood on the corner of Warstone Lane and Vyse Street in the Jewellery Quarter, near the Chamberlain clock. The Rose Villa Tavern, it was called. A Mitchells & Butlers pub, drinkers sitting among decorative tiles.

Fry looked at her watch again. Andy Kewley was late. That was unlike him. But maybe he’d needed a stiff drink before their meeting. She glanced up Vyse Street towards the Rose Villa, considered walking up to see if she could find him propped in the corner of the bar with a whisky, staring morosely at the tiles.

But that picture wasn’t right. It didn’t fit Kewley’s personality. He was much too careful for that. Much too cautious.

Fry entered the Warstone Lane cemetery. Hundreds of Victorian gravestones marching across the slopes, lurking in the hollows, hiding beneath shrouds of ivy. Tiers of catacombs, defaced angels, tombs blackened with soot. And that powerful, sickly sweet smell, still strong on the night air.

An engine revved noisily nearby, and a car raced away on the Middleway. It was very dark away from the streetlights,
and Fry pulled a small torch from her pocket. She looked down from the top tier of the catacombs to the grass circle below, the centre of the amphitheatre.

For a moment, Fry thought the vandals had struck again since her last visit to the cemetery, that another memorial angel had been toppled to the ground. In the light of her torch, she saw blank eyes pressed into the grass, a face mottled with damp.

But when she looked again, she knew this was no angel. The face was pale, but it wasn’t stone. The eyes were blank with the stare of death. And the mottled dampness was much too dark. It was dark as clotted blood.

Friday

The next morning, Ben Cooper drove through endless red-brick suburbs, streets so identical that it made him wonder how thousands of Birmingham commuters ever found their way home.

On the map, Birmingham looked like a giant spider’s web, a dense network of roads radiating out in a ragged pattern to absorb the surrounding motorways, M42, M5 and M6. Between the roads, the ground was thick with houses.

Cooper took a wrong turning somewhere as he left the Expressway. He thought he’d probably come off too soon, and was driving through some apparently nameless suburb. He stopped to look at the
A to Z
and turn round, and found himself sitting in front of a bay-windowed semi in an empty, tree-lined street. Cooper looked around him. Acres of brick and leaded glass. Bitumen-stained fencing, and flower beds full of pansies. This place was so suburban it was almost a caricature of itself. It might look comforting if you belonged here. But it was pretty damn weird if you didn’t.

He knew there must be thousands and thousands of homes like this, out there in the spider’s web. Suburb upon suburb, making up a vast brick blanket that covered most of the West
Midlands. Warwickshire had been here once, and part of Staffordshire. Now great chunks of them had been absorbed into the urban sprawl.

While he was stopped, he called Fry’s mobile number.

‘Diane, are you at the hotel?’

‘No.’

‘Where, then?’

‘What do you want to know for? What’s going on, Ben?’

‘I’m coming to see you.’

‘What? Where are you?’

‘I’m in Birmingham. I’m not sure exactly which part.’

‘At the risk of sounding dim – why?’

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘And you couldn’t do it on the phone? You’re not turning into another paranoid, are you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind. Come to Hockley. Warstone Lane, in the Jewellery Quarter. You’ll find it easily enough. Just follow all the police cars.’

A few minutes later, Cooper finally reached the city centre. Its tower blocks, streams of traffic and crowds of pedestrians made him feel he was nothing but a single ant in the middle of a seething ant heap. Well, one insect might be insignificant. But at least that meant it went pretty much unnoticed by the rest of the heap.

It had always seemed to Cooper that city people lived in a permanent sodium twilight. It never really grew dark here, and the stars were invisible. The sky was only a dim void, way up there beyond the tower blocks. And in the daytime, it didn’t seem to get properly light in the shadow of those high-rise buildings. The streets running west to east were too narrow for the sun ever to reach the pavement. So shoppers and office workers gravitated to the open spaces to soak up some rays in their lunch breaks. The cathedral gardens were crowded with people escaping the shadows.

His departure on his rest day hadn’t been popular, particularly when he’d told Liz about it.

‘I’ve got to get right away for a few hours,’ he said. ‘The incident last night really shook me up.’

‘I understand, Ben. It’s been a tough week.’

‘You could say that.’

‘Maybe you ought to take more time off than just a few hours.’

‘No, I’ll be all right. Too much to do.’

‘So where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Birmingham.’

‘Birmingham? You’re kidding. Is this actually work?’

‘Well…I can’t say, really.’

And she didn’t sound happy with the reply.

‘Ben,’ she repeated, ‘why are you going to Birmingham?’

‘Liz –’

‘Do you think I don’t know that Diane Fry is there?’

Cooper could have kicked himself. Of course she would know that. He bet that Fry’s trip had been the subject of office gossip for days. It might have been better if he’d lied. She would have found him out though, and then it would have been even worse.

But what could he say to Liz now that would smooth things over, yet wouldn’t be a lie?

‘Diane needs my help,’ he said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

‘Simple? You might think so, Ben. But I’m not sure it is.’

DI Blake looked seriously troubled now. His face was creased with disappointment, as if Fry had let him down somehow.

‘Diane,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I remember you as a first-class colleague when we worked together in Aston. Straight as an arrow – that was DC Fry. Always going by the book.’

Fry said nothing. He hadn’t asked a question, so there was no need for an answer. Silence was a weapon that worked both ways.

She’d already been interviewed by members of the Major Incident Unit attending the scene of Andy Kewley’s death. Blake must have been alerted at an early stage, because he arrived before she’d even finished making her initial statement.

Fry watched the West Midlands forensic scene investigators in their white scene suits and blue latex gloves combing through the cemetery, picking among the cider bottles on the moss-covered tombstones. They would be looking for fingerprints, fibres, blood or hair, searching for footprints or weapons. She wished them luck in the tangled undergrowth and broken memorials.

She and Blake were standing at the outer cordon near the RV point. They were prohibited from the scene itself, excluded as unnecessary personnel.

Fry thought of the three principles of crime-scene management – protect, record and recover.

The potential for contamination must be immense. If an item of evidence was vulnerable, the chances were that everyone was going to walk over it. She might have walked over something herself, crushed some fragment of vital trace evidence into the dirt.

‘How was he killed?’ asked Fry. ‘It looked like a head injury to me. But they won’t tell me anything.’

‘Yes, blunt instrument.’

‘He can’t have been dead for long. He liked to be on time.’

‘And you didn’t see anybody?’ asked Blake.

‘No.’

‘So was there some particular reason you were meeting him?’

‘Because he called me and asked me to, that’s all. I covered it all in my statement to the MIU.’

‘Yes, you’re right – it’s not my enquiry. But I worked with Kewley for a while too, don’t forget.’

Fry shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Who would want to attack Andy Kewley?’

‘Well, we get all kinds of people hanging around in places like this. Sociopaths, drunks, drug addicts. Individuals who ought to be in secure accommodation, but who’ve fallen through cracks in the system. They’re drawn to disused areas like old cemeteries.’

‘Oh, I see. You mean it was a random assault? Just some harmless homicidal crank?’

‘I don’t know, Diane. I don’t have any information. What do you think?’

Fry didn’t answer the question. ‘Somebody must have seen Andy arrive, at least.’

‘Uniforms are doing a trawl for witnesses, but my guess is it will be a short list.’

Fry saw Ben Cooper arrive at the outer cordon, looking be-wildered by the extent of the activity in and around the cemetery. She also thought he appeared particularly dishevelled today. His hair fell untidily across his forehead, and she wasn’t sure that he’d even shaved properly this morning.

‘So did this sort of thing always happen when you lived in Birmingham?’ said Cooper when Fry explained the activity.

‘I didn’t live in Birmingham,’ said Fry. ‘I never lived in Birmingham, even when I was at college in Perry Barr, and even when I worked in Aston. I lived in the Black Country, at Warley.’

‘Okay. There’s a difference?’

‘You bet there’s a difference.’

‘I’ll try to remember.’

‘And another thing to remember, Ben – now you’re in the city, you can’t just go around being nice to everybody you pass in the street here. They don’t know who you are, and they won’t like it. You’re liable to get yourself killed.’

‘Stop being nice? Okay. I’ll try to be more like you, then.’

Fry thought she’d misheard him. ‘What?’

But Cooper ignored it.

‘So what do you think is going on, Diane? With your case, I mean?’

‘I really don’t know. I don’t have enough information.’

‘What’s your instinct?’

‘It’s too late for instinct, Ben. Much too late.’

Fry looked at him. For the first time, she noticed that he didn’t look well. It wasn’t just untidiness. He was pale, and there were dark rings under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been sleeping properly for days. His hand shook when he brushed back a lock of hair. She had never seen his hands shake before. Never. He seemed fidgety, and he kicked out irritably at a pigeon which came too close. She wondered what had really made him set off and drive to Birmingham this morning. Was he trying to escape from something back in Derbyshire? Because, if so, he seemed to have brought it with him.

‘How is the new role going, Ben?’ she said. ‘Acting DS.’

‘Oh, fine.’

But he sounded so unsure that he might as well have said the opposite.

‘You can ask me for advice, you know, if you want to. It’s not an admission of weakness.’

‘Well, it’s not the job. It’s just something I’m worried about. The family of this dead girl.’

‘The drowning accident on Monday?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s been bothering you all week, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but the DI thinks I’m worrying about nothing.’

‘Oh no, don’t tell me – you’ve found another lost cause to champion.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t listen.’

Hearing his irritation, Fry immediately regretted her response. She didn’t want him to go away again.

‘No, I’m sorry, Ben. Go on. What about this family?’

Standing near the incident command unit, Cooper told her about the Nield family, and his suspicions, about the ambiguity of the witness statements and his fear that their memories of events couldn’t be relied on. Exactly as he knew it would, just telling Fry about it all helped him to get things clear in his mind. He could detect the weaknesses in his own arguments by watching her face and reflecting on his words. When he’d finished, he knew what he should be doing next, what questions he should be asking. And Fry had hardly needed to say anything.

‘Thanks, Diane,’ he said.

‘I didn’t do anything.’

A woman stepped out from behind the van. Cooper wondered if she’d been there all the time. Fry introduced her as Rachel Murchison, a member of DI Blake’s team. But he could see that she didn’t really look like a police officer.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing,’ said Murchison. ‘You were talking about interference theory, which is an interest of mine.’

‘I didn’t mean to suggest that the witnesses had been deliberately interfered with,’ said Cooper, wondering if he’d said too much in public.

‘No, I know. It’s just a name for it.’

‘Are you a psychologist?’ he asked.

Murchison smiled. ‘Let’s just say, I know the theory.’

‘I’ve been wanting to ask someone about this – the way witnesses perceive things. Why their memories of an incident might contradict each other.’

‘Well, our memories of what we’ve seen are often inaccurate. I mean, they might not actually be what happened. Everyone knows this. When it comes to a court case, your witnesses always contradict each other. Some of them are better left out of the witness box, because they only muddy the water, and then no one knows what to believe.’

‘But they’re not lying,’ said Cooper.

‘No, of course. They’re not lying, just mistaken. Some witnesses see what they want to see. Or they remember what they think you want to them to remember. In a nutshell, that’s interference theory.’

‘So the interference is self-imposed?’

‘In a way,’ said Murchison. ‘As with all memories, our eyewitness memories can be distorted by what we previously knew, which is pro-active interference, or what we subsequently learn – retroactive interference. The distortion of memories has been widely studied. Retroactive interference can result from police questioning, which is well intentioned but can lead to difficulty in accurate recall. Unfortunately, poor interview techniques are all too common.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ said Cooper.

He looked at Fry, then looked away again, hoping she didn’t think that he was referring to her abilities.

‘If you’re interested,’ said Murchison, ‘the classic study on this subject is Loftus and Palmer. They showed eyewitness memory was vulnerable to post-event distortion. In their experiment, it came down to a difference between the questions “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” or “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” Participants asked the first question were convinced they’d seen broken glass. The use of the word “smashed” affected their recollection.’

Cooper nodded. ‘It makes sense. It was what I was thinking anyway.’

‘And you,’ said Murchison. ‘How is your short-term memory?’

‘Now Cooper was taken aback. He hated being so transparent. But people often said his feelings were written on his face.

‘Not good,’ he admitted. ‘Not during these past few days. I get confused about what I saw and what I didn’t.’

‘It’s the result of trauma – that is, of experiencing the child’s
death in the river, and being helpless to save her. Short term, you may have re-experiences – flashbacks. You may also get adverse reactions to anything your brain associates with the traumatic event. In this case, water, perhaps?’

Cooper remembered his reluctance to go too near the river in Dovedale. He nodded cautiously, wary of admitting a weakness.

‘It’s perfectly common,’ said Murchison. ‘It should pass in time.’

‘Does it always pass?’

‘Well, not always. If left unacknowledged and untreated, it can develop into full-blown PTSD, and the effects of that can last for years. Occasionally, serious psychological disturbances may result from traumatic experiences in the past. But that’s quite rare.’

‘Now Cooper was interested.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Would it be more common in a child?’

‘Oh, yes. Certainly.’

A few minutes later, Murchison took Fry aside for a quiet word. They stood at the corner of the cemetery, just outside the cordon.

‘Diane, your colleague has a problem,’ she said.