Lost River (8 page)

‘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 café. 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 Tor.

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 Café 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.

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.

Rachel Murchison showed her to a room on one of the upper floors of Lloyd House, through an open-plan office full of ringing telephones.

‘I just wanted to touch base before the meeting,’ said Murchison, arranging a folder full of papers in front of her.

‘Yes, I understand.’

Touching base. One of those phrases beloved by management types everywhere. Fry’s heart sank when she heard it.

Murchison was now in a navy blue suit offset with a white blouse, dark hair tied neatly back, businesslike and self-confident, but still with that guarded watchfulness. She was the specialist counsellor, there to judge her psychological state.

In any cold case rape enquiry, the police had to consult counsellors before they approached a victim, and develop a joint approach strategy. They needed to understand whether the victim had moved on and didn’t want to testify.

On the day Blake and Murchison came to Derbyshire, their approach strategy would already have been developed. They had planned their tactics before Fry even heard about the hit on the DNA database.

‘I’m just here to help. There’s no pressure. It’s all about support.’

Support. It was such an over-used word. Fry had already heard it too often. There, in that overheated room, looking out over the back of the Edendale football ground, it had the dead sound of a curse.

‘It’s understandable that you feel a need to be in control. Perfectly normal, in the circumstances.’

Rachel Murchison would be from a sexual assault referral centre. Fry knew the police would have examined the stored exhibits from her assault for blood, saliva or semen traces, with the help of the Forensic Science Service. They might have
found the tiniest speck of sperm on a tape lift from her clothing. Without statements from independent eyewitnesses, the police were reliant on forensic science.

But here, there was a witness, wasn’t there? Someone had come forward after all this time. She wondered if she would get to find out who this person was.

‘I understand from our phone conversation that you were visiting family in Perry Barr,’ said Murchison. ‘Your foster parents? You keep in touch then? That’s good.’

Fry didn’t tell Murchison that she’d been guilty of failing to keep in touch as well as she ought to have done. Christmas cards, the occasional phone call. Jim and Alice Bowskill would have been justified in reproaching her, but that wasn’t their way.

Instead, she gave an answer that she felt sure would tick the right box.

‘They’re very supportive.’

‘Excellent.’

Murchison looked down at her folder. Fry was trying to avoid letting her eyes stray that way, afraid of seeing her own name leap out at her, preserved as a subject for psychological study.

‘And there’s a sister, I believe?’

Indeed there was. Angie Fry was her older sister. They’d been apart for fifteen years, but were finally reunited. If united was the right word.

‘As I’m sure you know, we were both taken into care as children,’ said Fry. ‘I was nine, and Angie was eleven.’

‘For your own protection?’

‘Social Services said my parents had been abusing my sister. They said it was both of them.’

‘So your childhood was spent in foster homes?’

‘Yes.’

At first, they’d kept moving on to different places. So many different places that Fry couldn’t remember them. It was a
few years before she realized that they didn’t stay anywhere long because of her sister. Angie was big trouble wherever they went. Even the most well-intentioned foster families couldn’t cope with her. But Diane had worshipped her, and refused to be split up from her.

‘But you were separated from your sister at some point?’

‘When she was sixteen, Angie disappeared from our foster home and never came back.’

Diane had been fourteen when Angie left. It had been 1988, the year of the Lockerbie bomb, the year Salman Rushdie went into hiding and George Bush Senior became president of the USA.

The small details were impressed on Fry’s mind. The last memory that she had of her sister, Angie unusually excited as she pulled on her jeans to go out that night. She was off to a rave somewhere. There was a boy who was picking her up. Diane had wanted to know where, but Angie had laughed and said it was a secret. Raves were always held in secret locations, otherwise the police would be there first and stop them. But they were doing no harm, just having fun. And Angie had gone out that night, with their foster parents making only a token attempt to find out where she was going. Angie had already been big trouble for them by then, and was getting out of hand.

Looking back, Fry knew she had been unable to believe anything bad of Angie then. Every time they’d been moved from one foster home to another, it had been their foster parents’ fault, not Angie’s. And when Angie had finally disappeared from her life, the young Diane had been left clutching an idealized image of her, like a final, faded photograph. The memory still brought the same feelings of anger and unresolved pain. Feelings that revolved around Angie.

‘Of course, she was already using heroin by then.’

Fry wasn’t sure whether she’d said that out loud. But she could see from Murchison’s expression that she’d heard it.
And again, it seemed to be the right reply, although it had slipped out without any thought this time. The room began to feel like a confessional, the place to get any of those psychological hangups off her chest.

She supposed that was the theory, anyway. So along as she could talk about it, she must be all right. If only it was that simple.

‘And what of your parents?’ asked Murchison.

‘My real parents?’ said Fry. ‘I remember almost nothing of them.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Almost nothing.’

‘But your mother…?’

‘She died, they told me. My father is just a blank. He’s not even on my birth certificate.’

Murchison nodded. ‘And how do you feel about your family now?’

‘It’s all history,’ said Fry.

‘You’re saying you’ve moved on, Diane?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I’m glad to hear that. It’s possible to get eaten up by guilt over things that are no fault of yours. There’s no point in feeling guilty all the time. It has a very negative effect.’

‘Why would I feel guilty? There’s no reason for me to feel guilty about anything.’

‘It’s common to have irrational feelings that we can’t explain the reasons for.’

‘We?’

Murchison took no notice.

‘During this process, we’ll be trying to uncover any hidden memories that you may have, Diane.’

‘Hidden memories? Something else I’m not aware of?’

‘Those hidden memories are vital, both for their evidential value and for your own closure.’

Fry watched Murchison tidy away her folder. She wondered
if the counsellor felt as though she’d got inside the victim’s head, and satisfied herself that she was psychologically fit for the ordeal to come. Did Rachel Murchison now think that she understood Diane Fry?

Looking at the clock, Fry stood up first and shook hands. A lot of what had just been said sounded like bullshit. But Murchison had been right about one thing. She did need to be in control.

Like all the best detectives, DI Gareth Blake had a sidekick. He was an Asian detective sergeant, very smart, very bright, named Gorpal Sandhu. Though he said very little, Fry observed in him the same watchfulness. Perhaps, after all, it was characteristic of everyone in West Midlands Police. If so, she had forgotten it, had never noticed it when she served in Birmingham herself.

‘So have you kept in touch with any of your old colleagues in the West Midlands, Diane?’ asked Blake after the introductions.

‘No, not with anyone.’

‘Really? Not even DC Kewley?’

‘No one.’

‘That’s a bit unusual.’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

Fry thought it ought to be obvious that she’d wanted to put that part of her life behind her. Yes, it was true that her previous service with West Midlands Police was a memory she almost cherished sometimes, whenever she looked out at the primitive rural wasteland she’d condemned herself to in Derbyshire.

But that was an idealized image she’d created for herself, a long way from the reality. In fact, she had left Birmingham without a farewell to any of her colleagues. No leaving party, no parting gifts, no cards wishing her all the best in the future. She might as well have said:
‘I’m going out now. I may be some time.’

Blake and Sandhu were watching her, politely waiting until they had her attention again.

‘I’m sorry if I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, Diane,’ said Blake. ‘But we do have to go through the processes.’

‘I know.’

‘At the evidential stage, the CPS have to be satisfied first of all that there’s enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. That means that a jury is more likely than not to convict. Normally, if a case doesn’t pass the evidential stage, it won’t go ahead.’

‘Yes.’

‘If the case does pass the evidential stage, the CPS has to decide whether a prosecution is in the public interest. If the evidential test is passed, rape is believed to be so serious that a prosecution is almost certainly required in the public interest. Okay so far?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Now. When considering the public interest stage, one of the factors that Crown Prosecutors will take into account is the consequences for the victim of the decision whether or not to prosecute, and any views expressed by the victim or the victim’s family.’

‘Paragraph 5.12 of the Crown Prosecutors’ Code. Striking a balance between the interests of the victim and the public interest.’

‘Exactly. As I’m sure you know, the definition of rape was substantially changed by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Offences committed before 1st May 2004 are still prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Act 1956.’

‘And under the 1956 Act, it’s a defence if the defendant believed the victim was consenting, even if the belief was unreasonable.’

‘I’m afraid reasonableness is a matter of fact for the jury. Not for us.’

‘You said the case was re-opened on the basis of intelligence,’ said Fry.

‘Yes.’

‘And now you have a suspect.’

‘Two suspects, in fact,’ said Blake. ‘Their names are Marcus Shepherd and Darren Joseph Barnes. We had an element of luck, actually. Our primary suspect had a DNA sample taken when he was arrested for robbery and possession of a firearm. Criminals don’t just commit sexual offences, but other offences too.’

‘Are they in custody?’

‘Arrested and bailed.’

‘What? They’re out on the street?’

‘Diane, you know we have to get all the evidence together that we need for an airtight case. Evidential value is crucial. But forensic techniques have improved. We’re very hopeful.’

‘We had information, credible enough to arrest two suspects,’ put in Sandhu. ‘We took fingerprints and buccal swabs as per procedure, and we got a hit on the database.’

‘From both?’

‘Just the one,’ he said. ‘But we believe they were together. The lab might be able to get a new DNA profile from the exhibits in storage. New techniques are available. Low copy number.’

‘Yes.’

DNA techniques had advanced significantly over the last twenty years in terms of sensitivity, reliability, and speed of results. They had become really important in revisiting old cases, reviewing the evidence recovered at the time. Preservation must have been good in Birmingham, because DNA deteriorated after a while. DNA evidence had to be looked at in terms of preservation. If it was kept cold and dry, it lasted an awful lot longer. It was theoretically possible to obtain DNA profiles from samples over a hundred years old, provided it was known how they’d been preserved.

Forensically, it could all go horribly wrong before it ever got into the courtroom. The collecting and handling of evidence was so important.

There had been no witnesses to the assault that she could remember, and certainly none had come forward at the time. There had been plenty of appeals, of course. Lots of trawling from house to house in the area, hours spent stopping cars that used the nearby roads, and talking to motorists, lots of effort put into leaning on informants who might have heard a murmur on the streets. All to no avail. It was an offence with no witnesses other than the perpetrators and the victim.

Apart from her own statement, the only evidence Fry had of the attack were bruises and abrasions. And those faded with time, leaving only the crime-scene photographer’s prints to pass around a jury. As for the psychological scars…well, they didn’t show up too well in court.

But now they had a credible witness report, as well as an e-fit record that had been kept in the imaging unit, and a copy of the file retained by the FSS. So where had this new witness come from?