Lost River

10

Wednesday

Next morning, Ben Cooper received the first anonymous letter of his career. It was addressed to ‘Police Officer Cooper’, and it had been pushed through the door at Ashbourne section station. It wasn’t actually written in green ink, but the writing was difficult to decipher. After a few minutes, Cooper thought he made it out:

You should look into Mr Robert Nield. He’s not all he seems. The man is a sinful beast, and the Lord will punish his ways.

Well, the spelling and punctuation were good, anyway. That wasn’t what he expected from an anonymous letter. It suggested someone with a decent schooling in English grammar, which wasn’t easy to come by these days. An older person, he guessed. Educated in English and familiar with the Bible, if not entirely well balanced.

A shame there wasn’t much information in the letter. Cooper wasn’t personally familiar with anonymous allegations, but he’d imagined there would be more to go on — a few lurid details of what the accused person was supposed to have done. But here, he had to use his own imagination. And that could sometimes be worse.

Taken together with his unease about the vagueness of the witness statements from Dovedale, and his own instinctive feelings towards the Nields, Cooper had something that he didn’t feel able to ignore. He might not have enough to put a case together on paper, but there was sufficient to raise concern, surely?

After a few minutes’ thought, he decided to take those concerns to his DI, Paul Hitchens, who was now his immediate line manager.

In his office, Hitchens smoothed his tie anxiously as he looked at the anonymous letter.

‘A nutter,’ he said. ‘We get them all the time. You know that, Ben.’

‘I think it might be worth following up, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘There was a convicted sex offender among the bystanders in Dovedale,’ said Cooper.

‘How do you know?’

‘I recognized him. His name is Sean Deacon.’

‘Was he near any children?’

Cooper hesitated. ‘I couldn’t say for sure.’

‘Do any of the witness statements mention him? Or the parents?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have any reason to suppose that Mr Nield is connected with Deacon in some way?’

‘No.’

‘Well, if you want to give this Deacon a warning, do that. But the witness statements agree on what happened to Emily Nield.’

‘I don’t think they do,’ said Cooper. ‘They’re inconsistent. No two statements give exactly the same sequence of events.’

‘That’s always the way with multiple witnesses,’ said Hitchens. ‘You know that, Ben.’

Cooper did know that. But he was discovering a stubborn streak in himself. The inconsistencies in the statements felt like a personal failure. He needed to know exactly what had happened to Emily Nield. Exactly. Vague and contradictory statements from confused eyewitnesses weren’t good enough.

Hitchens glowered at his intransigence.

‘There’s no mystery about the death of Emily Nield,’ he said. ‘It was an accident. The inquest was straightforward, the body has been released by the coroner, and the family will be able to hold the funeral this week.’

‘Yes, it’s tomorrow morning.’

‘Well, there you are. By tomorrow, it will all be over and done with. The family can get on with their lives. Isn’t that what we all want?’

‘She was so cold. As if she was in shock.’

‘She’d been in the water. And that water in the River Dove is cold at the best of times, even though the weather has been so warm. It comes straight down off the hills, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘As I understand the matter, it was thought at first that it might have been the shock of the cold water that stopped the girl’s heart when she first went into the river. But there was no evidence of that at the postmortem. Her heart was perfectly healthy.’

‘And the head injury — ’

‘She slipped and hit her head on a rock.’

‘There’s no actual evidence of that.’

‘Well? Ben, you’re not suggesting one of the parents hit her, or something?’

‘It happens. Parents are driven beyond endurance sometimes.’

‘They don’t all kill their children,’ said Hitchens.

‘I have a feeling about the father. He’s bitter about rival supermarkets. I think business must be bad.’

‘So?’

‘Well, he’s under stress. That could drive him to do something desperate.’

‘Like drowning his eight-year-old daughter? You’re struggling now, Ben. Grasping at straws.’

‘Sir, my instinct is telling me there’s something wrong.’

Hitchens sighed.

‘Ben, just stop a minute, take a deep breath, and look at the situation impartially. You’ll see there’s no mileage in pursuing some vague accusation, or even your instinct. Anonymous letters are ten a penny. Ignore it and move on.’

‘If we ignore something now that turns out to be significant later on, it will reflect badly on this department.’

‘I’m prepared to take that risk. Call it my instinct, if you like. And I’ve been in this job longer than you have, Ben.’ Hitchens softened. ‘Look, you don’t need to find a high-profile case to prove yourself. There’s plenty for you to do to show your worth.’

‘That’s not what I’m trying to do, sir.’

‘Are you sure? I know you must see this as your opportunity to shine, with DS Fry out of the way for a while.’

‘No, sir. Really.’

‘Mmm. Well, take it easy. Don’t invent some mystery where there isn’t one, all right?’

‘All right, sir.’

‘Ben, it’s not personal, is it? There’s no emotional involvement? I mean, I know you were there at the time. Well, more than there, you took action. You — ’

‘I tried to save her life, yes.’

‘Yes, of course. But you have to remain objective. Take a step back, consider this incident as if you weren’t involved. I repeat, there’s no mystery. Okay?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Now start paying some attention to the rest of your case-load. There’s Michael Lowndes, for a start.’

‘Yes, sir. Michael Lowndes.’

The Grand was the largest hotel in Edendale, a vast Victorian pile designed for the Duke of Devonshire and now owned by a Spanish company based in Majorca. The lobby was certainly grand, with its marble pillars, its chandeliers, and its wide staircase. From outside, the hotel looked French in architectural style, but inside the decoration was almost Moorish.

Cooper had never stayed here, or eaten in the expensive restaurant. But he’d once attended a wedding reception in the Cavendish Suite, and had his photograph taken with the rest of the wedding party on the lawn in front of the cherry trees.

He identified himself at the reception desk, and was taken through to the office, where a duty manager escorted him to the kitchens. They passed along an elegant corridor with gleaming tiles, then through a door marked ‘staff only’ and entered a completely different world, away from the eyes of the guests.

Here they found Sean Deacon dressed in white overalls, mopping the floors. Not exactly Gordon Ramsey, then.

Deacon was almost exactly as Cooper remembered him. A little older, of course, but it was hardly noticeable. An unremarkable face, the face of a middle-aged man with receding hair and a hint of grey stubble, a man who could pass unnoticed in any street. He’d put some weight on around the waist, moved a little more slowly. But Deacon was the same man he’d seen in Dovedale.

‘Sean Deacon,’ he said.

Deacon undoubtedly recognized the tone, if not Cooper’s voice. He had enough experience of the police. He looked up, a sideways glance — wary and suspicious. The eyes left Cooper in no doubt.

They were given a small storeroom to talk privately. Cooper let Deacon sit on the only chair, while he stood over him. Deacon didn’t object. He looked resigned, as if he’d gone through all this before and knew where it would end.

Cooper checked his details — his age, his address in Wirksworth. Deacon agreed that he was a registered sex offender.

‘What is it that you want?’ he said. ‘What’s happened that you want to implicate me in?’

‘Where were you on Monday morning, Mr Deacon?’

Deacon sighed. ‘I expect you already know. You people never ask those sorts of questions unless you already know the answers. It gets very tiresome.’

Cooper was taken aback by the way Deacon talked. He sounded well educated, his Derbyshire vowels softened by some other accent. Not only that, but Deacon spoke softly, with a relaxed manner that was more than just resignation. He seemed quite calm. He wasn’t what Cooper had expected.

‘You were in Dovedale on Monday morning. Is that right, sir?’

‘Yes, of course it is.’ Deacon looked up at him. ‘You were there, too. Your picture was in the paper. They didn’t do you justice. What did you say your name was again?’

‘DC…I mean, Acting DS Cooper.’

‘Forgotten who you are? Join the club.’

Cooper turned and walked a few paces away from him, found he was against the wall, and turned back. Deacon looked at him, smiling gently.

‘Thought you were meeting a monster, did you?’

Cooper found he was no longer looking at the man of his memory. This wasn’t the watchful predator of his recollection, the figure crouched on the rock above Dovedale. His mind had played him a trick, conjured something out of his imagination. And Deacon was right — he’d come here with an expectation.

‘I did my time,’ said Deacon. ‘But that’s not enough, I know. Not enough for society.’

‘No.’

A four-year prison sentence meant that Sean Deacon would be permanently on the Sex Offender Register. That was unless he took advantage of a High Court ruling that indefinite registration was incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. The court had declared that it denied offenders a chance to prove they no longer posed a risk of re-offending.

Cooper tried to remember the man he’d once interviewed for that attempted abduction, the suspected paedophile slouching from an interview room to a cell in the custody suite at Edendale. That look over his shoulder, the tilt of the head, the distinctive way he moved. This was the same man. And yet he wasn’t.

‘What were you doing in Dovedale?’ asked Cooper again.

‘I’d been walking. It’s my hobby, when I’m not at work. I was on the moors west of Tissington. I’d parked my car in a lay-by on the A515, and I followed a footpath near Gaglane Barn to look at an old lime kiln in the middle of the fields there. The path comes out above Dovedale, near Reynard’s Cave.’

Cooper nodded. It sounded about right so far.

‘And then I heard all the noise in the dale, so I climbed up on to the arch to see what was happening,’ said Deacon. He looked at Cooper again. ‘And that was it.’

‘You’re sure you weren’t near the children at all?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. Do you have any witnesses who say otherwise?’

‘No, we don’t,’ admitted Cooper.

Deacon studied him. Now Cooper felt he was the one being assessed, and perhaps failing to live up to expectations.

‘I heard about the little girl who drowned,’ said Deacon. ‘You were the one who tried to save her, weren’t you? I read it in the paper.’

‘Yes, that was me. But I failed.’

Deacon shook his head sadly. ‘It’s so often the case, that we either succeed or fail. Society doesn’t allow for anything else, does it?’

Tm not sure what you mean.’

The man stood up slowly. Cooper felt no sense of threat from him at all. In his white overalls, he looked faintly pathetic. Yet he had his own strange air of dignity.

‘I’ll admit there was another reason why I was on top of the arch near Reynard’s Cave,’ he said.

‘What is that?’

‘I like being high up.’

‘So you can see what’s going on? Check out who’s around?’

Deacon shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that. I like the idea of flying. Don’t you?’

‘I don’t think about it much.’

‘When I’m high up like that, I think about flying. Or perhaps about falling.’

Cooper looked at him again. Did Deacon have suicidal tendencies? It wasn’t uncommon among sex offenders. Their condition was often incurable, and many could see no other way out of a life of constant suspicion.

Deacon smiled sadly. ‘Life is all about falling and flying, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Falling and flying. If you’re good at what you do in life, you fly. If you’re bad at it, you fall. It’s as simple as that, Acting DS Cooper. The same with death, really. Up or down, falling or flying. We can only do one or the other. There’s no in between, is there?’

It was a pity that his name had appeared in the paper. Cooper picked up a copy of the Eden Valley Times on his way back to West Street. The story wasn’t difficult to find, since it was on the front page, and they’d dug out some old photograph of him from their archives. It made him look about fifteen years old.

Publicity was rarely a positive thing for an individual police officer, unless you happened to be involved in a community project, helping out at a fun day or giving kids fishing lessons. And then it was pretty much compulsory. When it came to major incidents, contact with the media was best left to the bosses and the Media Office.

But the headline ‘Cop’s brave bid to save drowning tot’ couldn’t do much damage, no matter how over the top it was. The subs on the Eden Valley Times loved short words, preferably no more than three letters. ‘Bid’, ‘cop’, ‘tot’ made a perfect combination. They hardly needed a verb.

Of course, Edendale would soon be without a local rag altogether. Everyone knew that the Eden Valley Times was on its last legs. The paper hadn’t been locally owned for years. Its present proprietors were a big publishing corporation based in Edinburgh, who had centralized everything they could think of. They’d moved admin to Peterborough, page production to Chesterfield, and printing to Gateshead. The edition Cooper held in his hands felt flimsy, no more than forty pages, when once it had been more than eighty.

Advertising revenue had fallen through the floor for papers like the Times. People got their news from TV or the internet these days. And once the recession cut the legs from under the Property and Motors sections, that was pretty much the last nail in the coffin. There were a few reporters left in the office on the corner of Fargate, but they rarely ventured out on the streets. Everything had to be done by phone when they were so shorthanded.

Still, they’d managed to spell his name right, and the subs in Chesterfield hadn’t messed up the story too much. He supposed he ought to be grateful for small mercies. The trouble with publicity like this was that everyone he met would want to ask him about it, to pat him on the back and say ‘Well done, anyway’ or ‘Hard luck — you tried.’ It wasn’t what he needed. Maybe he should keep his head down for a few days until it had all blown over.

Back in the office, everyone was pestering him for attention. They needed his advice, they wanted his signature, they had messages for him, they had questions. Always more questions.

‘Want me to follow that up?’

‘I can run with that if you like, Ben.’

‘The DI wants to know why it hasn’t been actioned.’

He really needed some advice. Cooper found himself automatically scrolling to Fry’s number on his mobile. At the last second, he remembered that she wasn’t around. Well, he could phone her, but she was in Birmingham. She would have no interest in what he was doing back in Derbyshire. And why should she?

Finally, Cooper called a meeting of his team. Gavin Murfin was the senior DC, as the longest serving. Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst made up the rest of the team. They were hardly an army of crime fighters. But they were doing their best, one case at a time.

‘So what’s the status of the drugs case on the Devonshire Estate? The Michael Lowndes enquiry.’

‘Our information says that there’ll be another meeting tonight,’ said Murfin. ‘We could nail them this time.’

‘Let’s do it, then,’ said Cooper.

‘Really?’

Three mouths fell open.

‘Diane would usually tell us to fill in all the paperwork and do a risk assessment,’ said Murfin.

‘It was all done the first time, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, yeah, but — ’

‘I’ll sign it off, then. Let’s set up the tasks. If we pull it off, I’d like Becky and Luke to make the arrests. Is that okay with you, Gavin?’

Murfin managed to control his eyebrows. ‘No problem, boss.’

While the others busied themselves, Cooper picked up the paper, read the headline again, and sighed. Well, as long as he didn’t get all the nutters in Edendale phoning him up and writing him letters in green ink…

It was only when he read down to the end of the story that he discovered the writer knew far more than they ought to.

‘Police are believed to have received an anonymous letter making undisclosed allegations against the Nield family.’

How the heck had the Eden Valley Times known that?

A call to the news editor established that the paper had received a copy of the same letter that was sent to the police, and theirs had come in anonymously, too.

So it was used without checking? Was that the standard of journalism now?

‘We don’t have the staff,’ said the news editor.

Don’t have the staff? Cooper put down the phone and looked at his team of three. Join the club.