Lost River (5 page)

‘I suppose that’s true. But that’s what happened, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I’m sure it was,’ said Cooper, because that was what you said in these circumstances. ‘One more thing – did you happen to see anyone near your daughter in Dovedale? A stranger?’

They shook their heads.

‘No,’ said Nield. ‘Well, there were a lot of people around. All of them were strangers, I suppose.’

‘But no one in particular showing an interest in her?’

‘Not that I remember. Dawn?’

‘No, sorry,’ she said. ‘What is this about? These are strange questions to be asking. I don’t understand them.’

‘I’m just trying to clear up the details.’

Mrs Nield rose unsteadily and left the room. Cooper took a drink of his tea, found it was already starting to get cold.

‘She’ll be all right,’ said Nield. ‘It takes a bit of time.’

‘I know.’ Cooper looked out of the window at the outline of Thorpe Cloud. ‘By the way, what was Alex doing when the accident happened?’

‘Taking photographs, I think,’ said Nield. ‘We bought him a digital camera for his birthday. He loads them on to his computer and creates effects with them. He has some software. I’m not sure what they call it…’

‘Photoshop?’

‘That’s it. He’s very creative, you know.’

‘So what was he taking photos of in Dovedale?’

‘I don’t really know. Rocks, water, trees.’

‘Not people?’

‘No. He isn’t really interested in that. He likes to look for patterns. You know – the bark on a tree, moss on a stone, sunlight through the leaves. He makes images from them, and uses them as background on his computer screen.’

Nield smiled at Cooper.

‘There are a lot worse things that a boy of his age could be doing, aren’t there?’

‘Yes.’ Cooper smiled back. ‘I was thinking, Alex might have caught a few people in the background. If he was taking photographs of the river, for example. There were so many people around that day, it would be hard to avoid them altogether.’

Nield frowned. ‘Well, I suppose so. But he would edit them out. Why are you so interested?’

How to explain to him? How to tell the father that he would like to track down some more witnesses to what had happened? Independent witnesses, whose memories might not
yet have been distorted. Well, he couldn’t. Cooper hesitated for a few moments, then backed off.

‘Oh, no reason. Just in case there were any loose ends.’

Nield was still frowning, but before he could ask whatever question was on the tip of his tongue, his wife came back into the room. She looked better, as if she’d splashed cold water on her facer and combed her hair. It always helped, somehow.

‘How is Alex?’ asked Cooper.

‘A bit quiet,’ she said. ‘Do you want to talk to him?’

‘Well…’

‘He’d be glad to see you. He quite took to you yesterday.’

‘Really?’

‘He said he thinks your job must be interesting.’

Cooper suspected that Alex Nield was probably just another teenager who’d watched too many episodes of
CSI
and
The Wire
to have an accurate picture of what police work was all about in Derbyshire.

‘Go on up,’ said Nield. ‘He’s in his room. Second door on the left. He’ll only be playing on his computer.’

‘You’re sure you don’t mind? He’s a minor. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t talk to him without one of you being present.’

Nield laughed. ‘You’re not going to interrogate him, are you? It’ll do him good to talk to someone outside the family. And it might get him away from that computer screen for a few minutes.’

Cooper looked at Mrs Nield, who nodded. Well, it was against procedure, but he was doing it at the request of the family. It would be a private conversation, not an interview with a witness. As long as he kept it that way, he’d be fine.

On the first floor of the Nields’ house, he found a galleried landing, and counted the doors to five bedrooms. One door stood open, and when he glanced in he saw a desk, laptop, bookshelves, a small filing cabinet. Two of the others had small ceramic name plaques on them. He knocked on the
door bearing Alex’s name in Gothic lettering, and got a muffled ‘yeah’. He took that as an invitation to enter.

The boy was sitting at a desk in front of a PC screen, his legs curled round the seat of his chair. On the screen, Cooper saw a graphic representation of a medieval castle with individual buildings inside its walls – a barracks, a stable, a granary and warehouse.

‘What is it you’re playing?’

‘War Tribe.
It’s a morpeg.’

‘Oh, okay.’

Alex snorted, as if he was used to adults just pretending they understood what he was saying. But Cooper thought he might have a bit of an advantage.

‘An MMORPG,’ he said. ‘A Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game.’

‘Mm. Yeah.’

‘They’re usually programmed in PHP, aren’t they? What browser are you using?’

‘Safari.’

‘That’s good.’

Alex gave him a sly sidelong look. Cooper decided it was the moment to shut up. It was best not to push his luck too far. The boy would open up, if he wanted to.

Cooper noticed he was using a
War Tribe
mouse mat with a screen shot from the game.

Hanging on the side of the wardrobe was a white T-shirt with the slogan
Cranny Up, Noob!

‘Where did you get the mouse mat?’

‘Uh, they have a Café Press website. You can get all kinds of stuff there.’

‘Right.’

He felt like adding ‘cool’. But it might, or might not, be the wrong expression this month.

Down one side of the screen was an inventory of resources – iron, wood, wheat – and a list of the troops available. He
saw that this particular castle contained three thousand axemen and a thousand mounted knights.

‘Are you online a lot?’

‘You have to be, to build up your cities and watch out for attacks. Anyway, if you’re offline too long you go yellow, and you get kicked from your tribe.’

‘Right. And that would be a bad thing.’

‘Of course. You’ve got to be in a tribe.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Anyway, I’m not online as much as the big players. Some of the guys play on their mobiles,’ said Alex.

‘Oh, okay. But not you?’

‘My phone is too old. It’s rubbish.’

‘Maybe your dad will buy you a new one.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘So what’s your log-in name?’

Alex narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not going to ask me for my password, are you? That’s wrong. Besides, it’s illegal.’

‘Illegal?’

‘In the game. You can get banned for sharing your password.’

‘Why?’

‘People try to bend the rules all the time. They try anything to get an advantage. Even blackmail.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Oh, yeah. Big players threaten to catapult your cities unless you give them resources.’

‘A protection racket.’

‘That’s illegal too, though.’

‘Well, I don’t want to know your password. I only wondered what you call yourself.’

‘I’m Smoke Lord.’

‘Really? But you don’t smoke, do you?’

‘What, cigarettes? Of course not. It means your cities will be smoking ruins after I’ve attacked them.’

‘With your catapults?’

A lock of dark hair fell over his face as he turned to stare at the screen again.

‘I’m a Gaul,’ he said. ‘I have fire catapults.’

‘And attacking people and setting fire to their cities isn’t illegal?’

‘Don’t be stupid. It’s the whole point of the game. It’s called
War Tribe.
It’s a war game.’

‘Yes, that
was a
stupid question,’ admitted Cooper. ‘I think I must be out of my depth.’

‘I guess so.’

Cooper stood up. ‘Do your parents not mind you playing on the computer all the time?’

Alex snorted. ‘They keep a check on me, if that’s what you mean. They’ve got a lock on it. Parental controls. And while I’m at school, Mum comes into my room and checks my browser history, to see what sites I’ve been looking at. Can you believe that?’

‘Mum likes to be the one in control, does she?’

‘Too true. You ought to see her at meal times.’

Cooper could sense the boy starting to close up. He decided it wasn’t the best time to ask Alex about the photographs he’d taken in Dovedale. He left the teenager to his game and went back downstairs.

‘Thank you, Mr and Mrs Nield. I think I’ve bothered you enough. I’m sorry to have intruded.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Dawn. ‘It helps to talk, to have things to do. You’ve got to keep busy at a time like this. There’s no point in turning inwards.’

Cooper could see that she was the sort of woman who would put her energies into organizing things, into organizing anyone who came within her orbit. But the danger was that the grief would hit her later – perhaps at the funeral, or in the long, dreadful weeks to come. He searched for something to say that wouldn’t sound too trite.

‘Well, be thankful that you still have your oldest child.’

‘What?’ she said.

‘Alex.’

‘Oh. Yes.’

There was an awkward moment when they looked at each other in embarrassed silence, neither having any idea what to say.

Cooper knew that he’d been taking advantage of his position with the Nields. They would probably have reacted quite differently to a police officer who didn’t happen to be the man who’d tried to save their daughter’s life. They wouldn’t have talked so readily, been willing to answer those questions all over again without suspicion. But he’d pushed their gratitude as far as he could. It was time for him to leave.

But Mrs Nield touched his arm as he paused on the door step.

‘Ben – you’ll come to the funeral, won’t you?’ she said.

Cooper said goodbye to the Nields, and found his way out of Ashbourne. He thought back to the few minutes he’d spent with Alex. The boy was clearly absorbed in some other universe that his parents probably knew nothing about, and wouldn’t understand if they did. Interesting that so many things were illegal, or against the rules in the
War Tribe
universe. But he supposed there must be plenty of people who set out to be bullies, cheats and liars. Just like real life, in fact.

On the way out of town, Ashbourne’s confusing one-way system took him past the fire station. The alarm was sounding at the station. Two retained firemen jogged up the road, and a third arrived on a bicycle.

He wondered if Alex Nield’s online world had an imaginary fire brigade that would rush to put out the conflagrations caused by imaginary fire catapults. He supposed not. It was far too exciting to watch your enemies burn. As any teenage boy knew, destruction was so much fun.

Nearly two hours after leaving Edendale, Fry turned off the M6 at the Gravelly Hill interchange, the vast tangle of flyovers and slip roads known everywhere as Spaghetti Junction. In a couple of minutes she was on the Aston Expressway, eating up the tarmac on those two final miles of motorway that led right into the heart of the city.

It was morning rush hour. That was something she’d forgotten. She was sitting in a sea of carbon monoxide all the way from Sutton Coldfield to the Bull Ring. Tasting those fumes made Fry conscious of how she’d begun to acclimatize to her new home in Derbyshire. Up there in the hills, you could actually smell the air. You knew you were breathing oxygen.

In a way, the Expressway was a perfect introduction to Birmingham. It seemed to sum up all the city’s quirks and contradictions. This was the only stretch of motorway in the country with no central reservation. Instead, it had a seventh lane in the middle, which worked in opposite directions at peak times – a tidal-flow system, controlled by arrows on the overhead gantries. According to legend, one of these gantries used to contain a pipeline carrying vinegar from one part of the HP Sauce factory to another across the Expressway. Once, the pipeline had sprung a leak, and the paintwork of
dozens of passing cars had been ruined by vinegar rain. Or so the story went. It could just be a bit of Brummie folklore.

It was difficult to sum Birmingham up, though. Fry had heard many cliches about the place. Workshop of the Empire, Venice of the North, city of a thousand trades. Oh, and birthplace of heavy metal. Well, that last one was probably right. It probably dated from the time when four lads from Aston decided to become Black Sabbath. Ozzy Osbourne was some kind of god in these parts. They had even preserved the terraced house in Lodge Road where he grew up and first got himself into trouble as a disaffected youth.

She switched on the radio, and tuned it to BBC WM, where the Breakfast Show was just finishing. The presenter’s voice sounded familiar. He was another former student of UCE, one of the local success stories they often talked about. She couldn’t remember his name.

When her phone rang, she recognized Gareth Blake’s voice straight away. It was that voice, those smooth tones, that had told her they intended to re-open her rape case.

‘Diane, can you talk?’

‘Yes, I’m hands free.’

‘Good. Are you in Birmingham?’

‘On the Expressway,’ said Fry.

‘Brilliant. I’m really pleased that you made this decision, Diane.’

‘In a way, it was made for me.’

‘Oh? You’re not feeling under any obligation, are you? We haven’t put any undue pressure on you?’

That was typical of Blake. Covering all the bases, trying not to put a foot wrong. No one could ever claim that DI Gareth Blake hadn’t gone by the book.

‘No, don’t worry. I’m on board.’

‘That’s good, Diane.’ He sounded relieved. ‘We’ve set up a meeting with the team this afternoon at two o’clock. In Lloyd House. You know where it is?’

‘Gareth, I worked in Birmingham, remember?’

‘Of course, of course. Well…Colmore Circus. You’ll find it. The other thing is – Rachel Murchison would like to touch base with you before the meeting. Talk to her, won’t you? The sooner the better. She’s waiting for your call, Diane.’

Fry exited the Expressway and found her way via back streets through Aston and Newtown. Aston Cross was unrecognizable without the familiar background of the HP Sauce factory. Its old site was now just an expanse of soil and rubble.

Her last posting in the West Midlands had been here, as a detective constable based at Queens Road. D1 OCU, the Operational Command Unit for Aston. The building still looked the same. Marked police vehicles stood out front. Round the back, she knew, parking places were marked in strict hierarchical order from the entrance – Chief Superintendent, Superintendent, DCI, Chief Inspector, right down to the IT department.

She wondered if every cell in the custody suite still had the Crimestoppers number printed on a wall just inside the door. Somebody must once have decided that a prisoner in the cells might use his one call to report a crime. Hope sprang eternal, even in a custody suite.

Fry frowned at the boarded-up wreck of a pub under the shadow of the Expressway. She couldn’t recall its name, or whether she’d ever drunk there when she worked at Queens Road. Maybe they’d tended to go into The Adventurers a few yards down from the nick. Some memories were just lost, she supposed.

Driving up Aston Road North reminded her of a snippet passed on by one of the lecturers over coffee during her course in Criminal Justice and Policing at UCE. Apparently, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had lived on this very road when he was a poor medical student, helping out a local doctor. That was pre Sherlock Holmes, of course. She might even remember the name of the doctor, if she tried not to think about it.

This was part of her old patch when she was in uniform, and later as a divisional DC. She ought to know this area
well, but things had changed. New buildings had gone up, entire streets had disappeared.

Worse, every pub she remembered in this area seemed to have closed. The Waterloo in Wills Street, the Royal Oak on Lozells Road, even the Cross Guns in Newtown. All gone, and more besides.

But Birmingham had always been a work in progress. The city’s oldest buildings came down faster than new ones went up. The old Bull Ring shopping centre had been state of the art, not many decades ago. The early seventies, maybe? The late sixties? But the place had already been looking tired when Fry herself had hung around its walkways and escalators as a teenager. Now the city had a new Bull Ring. Borders and Starbucks, and the rippling metallic girdle of Selfridges, known to locals as the Dalek’s Ballgown. Award-winning, that Selfridges design. A sign of Brum’s arrival in the twenty-first century. But how many years would it last, before Birmingham decided to move on, ripped it down and stuck up something new?

She checked her watch. She was early yet. Not that they would mind her arriving a bit sooner than expected. They would probably be delighted. She could imagine them chuckling with excitement in the hall, fussing around her, patting her arm, ushering her into an armchair while the kettle boiled. But she wasn’t quite ready for that yet.

Beyond the underpass at Perry Barr, she turned into the One-Stop shopping centre and parked up. Inside the mall, she walked past Asda and Boots, and out into the bus station.

She had studied for her degree in Criminal Justice and Policing at UCE, the University of Central England, right here in Perry Barr. From the bus station, she had a good view of her old alma mater, though it had now been renamed Birmingham City University. She could see the Kenrick Library and the golden lion emblem high on the main building of the City North campus.

Instead of going back to her car, she crossed to the other side of the bus station and walked towards Perry Barr railway
station, past a few shops that stood between here and the corner of Wellington Road – The Flavour of Love Caribbean takeaway, Nails2U, the Hand of God hair salon.

But there was no point in avoiding the call. She was caught up in the machine now, had voluntarily thrown herself into the mechanisms of the criminal justice system, and she had no escape.

‘Diane, are you well?’ said Murchison, answering her phone instantly, as if she had indeed been sitting at her desk waiting for it to ring.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘I just wanted a few words with you, before our meeting this afternoon.’

‘You just wanted to make sure I was actually on my way, perhaps?’

‘No. I think you’ve made the commitment now. I’m sure you won’t change your mind. But if you do –’

‘I won’t,’ said Fry.

‘All right. Well, I know you might be feeling isolated and vulnerable at the moment. But don’t forget, you’re not alone in this. We’re all on your side. Any support you need is available, twenty-four hours a day. Anything you want to talk about is fine. Don’t hold it back. Call me, any time.’

‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’

‘Don’t worry, Diane. It’s my job.’

Fry winced, wondering if she had just received the hand-off, the subtle reminder that this wasn’t a personal relationship but a professional one. She supposed that counsellors, like psychiatrists, had to be wary of relationships with their clients, and draw firm boundaries. Some of the people Murchison dealt with must be very needy.

Below her, the yellow front end of a London Midland City train whirred into the Birmingham platform of the station.

‘There’s a lot of noise in the background,’ said Murchison. ‘Where are you?’

‘Perry Barr.’

Murchison was silent for a moment. Fry thought she had shocked her in some way. But Perry Barr wasn’t that bad, was it?

‘Diane, is there a particular reason you’re in Perry Barr?’

‘Yes, a personal one.’

She thought she could hear Murchison shuffling papers.

‘May I ask…?’

‘I’m visiting someone. Family.’

‘Oh. That would be…your foster parents?’

‘Well done.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘I know it’s all right. I don’t need your permission to visit them.’

‘No, no. Of course not.’

Tm just calling in for a cup of tea. So you can tell Gareth Blake I’m behaving myself.’

Murchison laughed. Fry thought she heard relief in her voice.

‘I’ll tell him. And we’ll see you later, yes?’

‘Of course. After I’ve checked into my hotel.’

Fry watched people hurrying down the concrete steps to the platform and getting on to the train. She thought about following them, getting on the train and riding past Aston, past Duddeston and right into New Street. As if she could ride by everything, without even a glance out of the window, and start all over again.

But she stood for too long at the top of the steps, and the train pulled out, the noise of its motor dying as an echo on the brick walls.

‘Diane,’ said Murchison finally, ‘everything will be all right.’

Fry ended the call, and looked around. Opposite her stood three tower blocks surviving from an early 1960s attempt at low-cost housing. A number 11 bus emerged from Wellington Road in a burst of exhaust fumes. A strong smell of burning rubber hung on the air from the plastics factory on Aston Lane.

She walked under the flyover and emerged on the Birchfield Road side. Kashmir Supermarkets and Haroun’s mobile phones. Money-transfer services and lettings agencies for student flats. Outside Amir Baz & Sons boxes of vegetables were stacked on the pavement. Fry stopped to look at some of the labels.
Bullet Chilli. Surti Ravaiya.

Now she felt lost. Nothing seemed to be recognizable. The street signs still pointed to UCE, but there was no point in following them. When you got there, you would find it had ceased to exist. Its name had been consigned to history.

The disappearance of so many landmarks gave her a strange sense of dislocation. Birmingham had been changing behind her back while she’d been away. This was no longer the place that she’d known. The Brum she saw around her was a different city from the one that she’d left. It was as if someone had broken into her previous life when she wasn’t looking and tried to wipe out her memories with a wrecking ball and a bulldozer.

But then, it was probably true the other way round. She wasn’t the same person who’d left Birmingham, either.

The Bowskills were the family she’d lived with the longest. She’d spent years in the back bedroom of their red-brick detached house in Warley. She’d been there when Angie ran away and disappeared. And she’d stayed with the Bowskills after her sister had gone. She’d needed them more than ever when she no longer had Angie to cling to.

And those times in Warley had been happy, in a way. Fry clearly remembered window shopping with her friends at Merry Hill, touring the Birmingham clubs, and drinking lager while she listened to the boys talking about West Bromwich Albion. Jim and Alice Bowskill had done their best, and she would forever be grateful to them. There had always been that hole in her life, though. Always.

There had been other homes, of course. Some of them she remembered quite well. She particularly recalled a spell with
a foster family who’d run a small-scale plant nursery in Halesowen, and another placement near the canal in Primrose Hill, where the house always seemed to be full of children. But those families were further back in her past, too far upstream to re-visit.

Jim and Alice Bowskill now lived in a semi-detached house with a vague hint of half-timbering, located on the Birchfield side of Perry Barr, the close-packed streets in a triangle bounded by Birchfield Road and Aston Lane. As she drove towards it along Normandy Road, Fry had a good view of the Trinity Road stand at Villa Park, reminding her that Aston was only a stone’s throw from this part of Perry Barr. Here, everyone was a Villa fan.

There seemed to be home improvements going on everywhere in these streets. She saw an old armchair standing by the side of the road, bags of garden rubbish lined up at the kerb.

Most of these houses had been built at a time when the people who lived in them weren’t expected to own cars. So there were very few garages and hardly any off-street parking. It took her a few minutes to find somewhere to leave her Audi.

Jim Bowskill was wearing his Harrington jacket. Well, surely not the original Harrington – the one she always remembered seeing him in. It would have been worn out by now. But he was a man who had never been without a Harrington. He once told her he’d started wearing one as a mod in the 1960s, and just found that he never grew out of them. When he reached his mid fifties, he’d thought for a while about having a change. But then he’d seen Thierry Henry wearing one in the Renault adverts, and that was it. The current Harrington was a classic tan colour, with the Fraser tartan lining and elasticated cuffs. Seeing it made Fry feel an intense burst of affection for him. It was probably just nostalgia – a vague memory of hugging a coat just like that.

He was a lot greyer than she remembered him. Slightly stooped now, too.

‘Hello, love. It’s good to see you. We haven’t seen much of you since you left to go to Derbyshire. Having a good time away from us, I suppose?’