Lost River (16 page)

Cooper had always thought of himself as pretty technically literate. He knew about iPods and iTunes, and Facebook and Spotify. But Alex Nield was making him feel old and out of touch. He had no idea what some of this stuff meant.

So how could he make real contact?

Finally, he clicked on Alex’s user name and a message box came up. He wrote:
‘Hi, mate. Can I join your tribe?’
and sent the message.

As soon as he’d sent it, Cooper realized that he probably shouldn’t have included so much punctuation. He’d automatically used capital letters and a full stop. A comma, even. That would give him away as someone outside the age range of Alex and his friends. He ought to have just stuck to lower case and lots of exclamation marks.

Nevertheless, he wondered if he would get accepted into the tribe. It was strange, but acceptance in this fictional world already seemed important to him. Because that was what it was all about – being part of a tribe. You needed support from your tribe mates, from your substitute family. Without their support, you were dead.

And Alex Nield was right. It felt like a lot more than just a game.

He sat back, drank a bottle of beer from the fridge, thought about calling Matt and Kate, and apologizing for his outburst. It had been unforgivable. Now that he’d cooled down, he couldn’t explain to himself why he’d lost his rag over something like that. He cared for Amy a lot. He wanted to help, if he could. But now Matt probably wouldn’t even speak to him about it again.

Then he thought about calling Liz. She would be expecting to hear from him. In fact, she’d been amazingly quiet today with the text messages. But the cat took the opportunity to jump up on his lap, and began purring with instant pleasure. And he found that he couldn’t get up to reach his phone, even if he’d wanted to.

Just before he switched off his laptop for the night, Cooper saw that he already had a reply to his message on
War Tribe.
Alex Nield was online then, sitting in his bedroom at home in Ashbourne, occupying his fantasy world.

Cooper clicked on the link to see how Alex had responded to his request to join the tribe.

In the message box, the boy had typed just two words:

die, nOOb!

Thursday

The funeral of Emily Nield was held on a morning of cool mist. The sun had been promising to break through since dawn, but didn’t quite make it until after the soil had been scattered on the coffin.

Crowds of people had streamed through the gothic entrance gates towards the tall central spire of the church. Watching the mourners, Ben Cooper wondered how many of them actually knew the Nields, let alone their eight-year-old daughter. In communities like these, there was a general instinct to turn out to show support and sympathy.

Cooper could see the faces of people closing as he passed. Everyone knew he was a police officer. Perhaps they were aware that he was the officer who’d failed to save Emily Nield’s life. And there was no question that most people would have read the story about the anonymous letter and the police investigation. As yet, no one had any idea who’d written the letter, or who’d leaked it to the paper. The clever money was on it being the same person. Someone with a grievance, and determined to give it a public airing, just in case the police didn’t act.

Considering what everyone would be thinking about him made Cooper feel like turning round and walking back to his
car. But that would be cowardice. That would be another failure.

In any case, these were nice, respectable people. No one would say anything. They might ignore him, or give him dark looks behind his back. They might shake their heads in disapproval at his presence. But no one would point a finger at him. They wouldn’t start shouting and screaming. Not here. His reception would be a cold, uncomfortable silence. That was the respectable way.

While Cooper waited, he found himself examining the wreaths. There was always a kind of poignant fascination in reading the message cards and trying to guess who the wreaths were from. Some of the messages were baffling, but no doubt they had some personal meaning – an intimate link between the dead and the bereaved. Take this one at the end of the front row, for instance. A large spray of roses and carnations, with a green ribbon. Cooper bent closer to read the card, and frowned a little.

Remembering 30th June for ever.

But today wasn’t 30th June. Nor was the day that Emily Nield had died. So what was the sender of the wreath remembering for ever?

And there was no name on the message, which was odd. Part of the ritual when someone died was this conspicuous display of grief in the form of giant displays of dead flowers. The bigger the wreath, the more you’d paid – and therefore, the more you cared. Wasn’t that the way it went? Leaving your name off the message card broke with the ritual. It meant the sender wasn’t concerned what other people thought. She’d sent the wreath entirely for her own reasons.

Cooper watched the mourners starting to file back towards their cars. He realized he’d already started to picture the sender of the anonymous wreath as a ‘she’. Well, it seemed a very female thing to do. Could it have been one of these women leaving the church in their black skirts? Or would this particular mourner have stayed away from the funeral
altogether, preferring to remain as anonymous as the card on her wreath?

With an exasperated sigh at the way his own mind worked sometimes, Cooper turned away from the flowers. His imagination loved fruitless speculation. The chances were, of course, that the date and the absence of a name on the card had just been a mistake made by the florist.

He saw a woman coming towards him. She was dressed not quite in funeral black, but in a subdued grey suit and white blouse, with blonde hair pulled tight back. A woman in her mid-forties perhaps, with an air of competence and confidence. No shyness about approaching him with this one.

‘You’re the policeman,’ she said. ‘Not in uniform, though. Don’t want to be recognized?’

‘I’m CID,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh, yes. You were in the paper, you know.’

‘I saw it.’

‘I’m sure you did your best. The rest of it – well, it’s not your fault, is it?’

‘Thank you.’ Cooper looked at her more closely. ‘Are you a relative of the Nields?’

‘God, no. Work colleague. You sort of have to come, when he’s the boss.’

‘You work at the supermarket, then? Lodge’s.’

‘I’m checkout supervisor. The name’s Marjorie. Marjorie Evans.’

Cooper kept an eye on the porch of the church for the Nields themselves coming away from their formal examination of the flowers.

‘Is Mr Nield a good boss to work for?’ he asked.

She sniffed. ‘It depends what you mean. He runs the store all right, keeps the profits coming in, from what I hear. Difficult times, but still. And he’s fair with the overtime and that. Not too much favouritism, no matter what the others say.’

She gave him a sly look to judge his reaction. Cooper took the cue.

‘All right. So what do the others say?’

‘I couldn’t possibly pass on gossip. That would be wrong. And at a funeral and all. The poor little child.’

Cooper watched a small party of relatives coming down the path towards them from the church.

‘Marjorie, if there’s something you think I ought to know –’

She seemed to be about to walk away, as if suddenly nervous about being seen talking with him.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it.’

‘If you don’t talk to me now, I could come to the store and talk to you.’

‘You mustn’t do that.’

‘So…?’

‘All right, look. You ought to talk to David – he’s the assistant manager. Or Yvonne, on Customer Service. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not accusing him of anything.’

‘Thank you.’

She slipped quietly away from him before Robert Nield turned to look their way. But Nield’s eyes were dull, and his attention was focused on his wife, who was barely able to walk without his support. He hadn’t noticed Cooper talking to one of his staff members. Or if he had, it didn’t register in his face. Cooper wasn’t yet sure how practised Robert Nield was at hiding his feelings.

And there was Alex standing behind his father, awkward in his black suit, a little too big for him. No thirteen-year-old boy had a black suit, so it was either borrowed, or bought specially for the occasion.

The boy showed no interest in the flowers, or in the other mourners. Cooper saw him gazing at the nearby graves, tilting his head to one side as he studied the moss-covered memorials and Celtic crosses. Some of the oldest graves were close to the church entrance, and he gradually edged away from his
parents towards a massive stone tomb, commemorating some notable Ashbourne family. He seemed to like the shape of it, the suggestion of a giant stone coffin with an inscribed slab for a lid.

Well, Alex Nield was thirteen. He and his friends had probably watched lots of horror films. Zombies and vampires were back in fashion in a big way these days. The world was full of evil creatures coming back from the dead, scrabbling their way out of a grave or sitting up in a velvet-lined coffin with blood trickling from their mouths.

But in the real world, the dead weren’t evil. There was no reason to be afraid of them. In fact, they were pretty boring and mundane – they just lay around doing nothing for the rest of eternity. Alex Nield’s curiosity was actually rather healthy. He looked as though he wished he had his digital camera tucked in the pocket of that black suit, so he could pull it out and take a few shots, catch the patterns of the gravestones, the light now casting the shadow of the spire across the grass.

Cooper shook his head as he watched the Nields ignoring their son, unaware of what he was doing while they talked to friends and relatives.

But perhaps he shouldn’t blame them. Grief affected people in different ways. Sometimes, the greatest effect was shock, which seemed to numb the emotions. The death of a child in a tragic accident was the biggest shock of all. And this had been a girl of eight, drowned in a few inches of water on a bank holiday outing.

Of course, the dynamics of most families were difficult to understand from the outside. Some were inexplicable on the inside, too. He’d seen families whose way of living wouldn’t be considered normal in any society, who seemed to be held together by hatred and cruelty rather than any other form of blood tie. In fact, the complexities of their relationships were enshrined in the crime figures. Most murders happened within
the family. Only ten per cent were committed by someone who was a stranger to the victim, and the figure was even lower for serious assaults and rapes.

Far too many parents seemed to get so caught up in the business of earning a living, paying the bills and bringing up a family, that they forgot what it was like to be children themselves. That, or they wanted revenge for their own miserable childhoods.

As for Alex Nield, his absorption in the online game was undoubtedly a retreat from reality. Cooper suspected he’d become as addicted as a junkie, with
War Tribe
his drug of choice. If left to run out of control, it could destroy his ability to handle real life as surely as shooting heroin into his veins. So the question became – what particular aspect of reality was he retreating from?

Cooper watched the boy’s parents walking towards him now. The father, cool and distracted, the mother fidgeting anxiously with her coat. Outside of school life, they represented Alex’s reality.

He turned to find a girl watching him. About seventeen years old, black eye liner, black lipstick. Black clothes, of course. A funeral was a place she fit right in.

‘Load of pious hypocrites, aren’t they?’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Isn’t it? I bet there isn’t one of them who believes the words.’

‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?’

‘Oh, that bit’s all right. I meant “in certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life”. That’s not true, is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do. When someone’s dead, they’re dead.’

The girl gazed back at him, her Doc Martens planted firmly on the gravel.

‘And who are you?’ asked Cooper.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

But Cooper knew who she was. He’d been a bit slow at first, might have noticed her earlier but for the predominance of black clothes. Gavin Murfin’s comment came back to him, and it clicked.

‘You’re Lauren.’

The girl turned on her heel and began to stamp away.

‘No, wait,’ called Cooper.

But Lauren ignored him, and carried on walking. Cooper ran after her, pulling a card from his pocket.

‘At least take this.’

Reluctantly, she accepted the card. And in another moment she’d stepped through the gothic gates on to the street and was gone.

A cavalcade of cars went back to the Nields’ house for the funeral lunch, lining the streets on the estate. Outside the house, Cooper met Marjorie Evans again, getting out of someone’s estate car. He stopped at the end of the drive, noticing something different about the house. He turned to Marjorie with a question.

‘Why are the curtains closed?’ he said.

She gazed at the front windows. ‘Well, it used to be customary. When there was a death in the family, I mean.’

‘But no one does that now, do they?’

She shrugged. ‘Some folk hang on to traditions. They might feel it was expected of them.’

‘By who?’

‘By the community.’

Cooper looked around the estate. Streets of executive homes, each house separated from the next by hedges and drives, cars safely locked away in their double garages, no one visible on the pavement. Any activity was taking place around the back, each family in its own private space. Not much community here. Surely no one cared whether the Nields kept their curtains closed or not? Those ideas of respectable behaviour had vanished decades ago.

But Marjorie was reminiscing.

‘I remember once, years ago, my gran went mad,’ she said.

‘Just because we kids went out on the street with no shoes on, in the summer. She said people would think we were ragamuffins. It was okay in our back garden, but not on the street. Not respectable, you see.’

‘When was that?’

‘About 1968.’

‘But the sixties are long gone,’ said Cooper. She smiled.

‘In some places,’ she said.

During the funeral lunch, Dawn Nield seemed to spend most of her time in the kitchen, despite the fact that she had friends and relatives to help. Cooper was getting a feeling about her now. She was one of those people who needed to be in control of everything, as though no one else could be trusted to do things right. He saw her straightening the plates on the table, brushing up the slightest crumb. A little bit obsessive. And probably quite difficult to live with at times.

Even while he was talking to people in the dining room, he could hear Dawn’s footsteps clacking backwards and forwards on the ceramic tiled floor. The sound never seemed to stop. Back and forth, back and forth she went. Clack, clack, clack. He sneaked a glance at Robert. But that was a man who didn’t reveal his feelings very much. If he was aware of his wife’s absence from the room, he didn’t show any concern.

Cooper pictured Dawn Nield doling out carefully measured amounts of food to her family, as if she were a prison warden, or an aid worker in a famine-stricken Third World country. Her manner suggested that supplies were strictly limited, that the recipient ought to be grateful. There even seemed to be a slight pause before she handed over a plate, as if she were waiting to see how each individual would express that gratitude. Cooper recognized that Dawn had found her role, a
function where she could exercise power over those around her.

Why did the way she smiled so possessively at the family waiting at the table remind him of his childhood? And why did the way she watched each person eat with a sharp eye make him feel guilty about leaving a bit of potato salad at the side of his plate? He noticed that she hardly ate anything herself, but spent her time passing dishes, rushing off to the kitchen for more bread, more sauces, or an extra plate.

He gravitated towards the kitchen to get a closer look. The units seemed to be brand new. Too new to have been in the house when it was built, even though it was no more than twelve years old. But some people insisted on installing a new kitchen every two years, as if they only lasted that long before they became infested with germs. He could see Dawn Nield being one of those women.