Lost River

17

When Fry awoke in her hotel room that morning, she knew from the state of the bedclothes that she’d been dreaming. Dreams always made her toss and turn restlessly, kicking out at the duvet and crumpling the bottom sheet. She had a dim recollection of being lost in a strange city. No, that wasn’t right — it wasn’t a totally strange city, it was like Birmingham in some ways, but unlike it too. She’d known where she wanted to get to, but couldn’t find the way. All the roads had changed, and none of them went where she expected them to. As a result, she’d been getting further and further away from her destination instead of nearer to it. And of course, she’d been running out of time. In every dream she ever had, she was always short of time. Forever in a hurry, and always destined to be late.

As she exercised and showered, Fry slowly began to realize that fragments of real memories had been scattered through her dream. They were elusive recollections, pebbles in the sand, which slithered away when she tried to grope after them. Like the drops of water bouncing off her body, they had pinged against her mind and whizzed away again.

Was this what Rachel Murchison had meant when she talked about hidden memories? But these were more than hidden. These memories were playing a game with her, continually sneaking close enough to be almost within her grasp, then eluding her like slippery balls of soap.

Of course, you brought along a lot of baggage as you went through life. Some of it clung to you so persistently that it weighed you down for years. But surely there was even more baggage that you left behind, wasn’t there? Memories and experiences, and failed relationships, that you shrugged off and left at the roadside when you moved on. She pictured a mass of sagging cardboard suitcases, sealed with grubby parcel tape and bulging at the corners. A long row of them, standing at the edge of a pavement, as if awaiting collection by the binmen, but destined never quite to reach the tip. There wasn’t ever any point in going back and poking open the lids to look at what you’d left behind. The accumulated mould was likely to choke you, the dust to get in your eyes.

Now her body craved action, something to focus the pentup tension, some target to hit out at. Her old shotokan master in Warley had taught her to recognize that feeling and use it. Very soon, she would have to get that release, or the dark well of anger would boil over and the wrong target would be in the way.

An hour later, Fry had eaten her usual light breakfast and was standing on the walkway over the fountains, near the eye-shaped Costa Coffee outlet in Central Square. Office workers in dark suits strolled through the square, past the steps in front of the Italian-style arcade of the 3 Brindleyplace office block.

It was unseasonably warm again. More like July than early June. The weather shouldn’t be quite so humid this early in the summer, not in England. But maybe this was the climate change they’d been warning her about for years, and Birmingham was turning into the new Provence. Soon there’d be vineyards on the slopes of the Lickeys, and olive trees growing on the banks of the Rea.

Well, not really. There’d just be more office workers sweating in their glass towers. Mosquitoes swarming on the scum of the canal. Huge, pale women showing far too much flesh in their halter tops and baggy shorts. Brum would never be Cannes, no matter how much it tried.

Tower blocks were going up again in Birmingham. But now they were high-rent, city-living apartments. The inhabitants of the Chamberlain Tower would never be able to afford to live on the top floors of the Beetham, above the Radisson SAS. She could imagine them having a good laugh when Beetham Tower residents’ cars were trapped in their underground car park for three days by a breakdown in the computerized access system.

When Angie arrived, she was carrying a black shoulder bag.

‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Can we go to your hotel room?’

‘Yes, if you like.’

They went back to the hotel, checking that the housekeeping team had finished with her room, and locked the door.

‘There’s some stuff for you,’ said Angie.

Diane looked at the folder she put on the table.

‘Stuff?’

Angie flicked it casually. ‘Oh, names and addresses, witness statements, signatures of investigating officers, PNC print-outs. Forms and more forms, I don’t know what.’

‘A copy of the case file? You’re kidding.’

‘You’ll be able to tell what it all is, I suppose. I hope it’s what you need.’

Diane opened the file, and read the cover sheet. ‘How on earth did you get hold of all this?’

‘I have my abilities. I’m always unappreciated, of course.’

Leafing through the file, Diane felt her sense of astonishment fighting with a feeling of guilt — guilt at the knowledge she was handling confidential information that should never have left Colmore Circus.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t ask,’ she said, hardly able to look her sister in the eye.

‘That’s usually the best advice.’

‘Are their Phoenix prints here?’

‘Probably. You’ll have to look, won’t you?’

Diane closed the file. She had hardly read a word of it, simply scanned the headings. Case summary, Witness Statement, Record of Interview. And on all of the pages was the familiar black bar — ‘RESTRICTED WHEN COMPLETE’.

‘I’m not sure I can take them,’ she said.

‘This stuff has all the names, doesn’t it? You’ve seen enough to tell that. Suspects, witnesses, alibis — it’s all there, I know it is.’

‘Angie, I’m sorry, but it goes against the grain even to handle something like this, when I know it’s been obtained illegitimately.’

Throwing herself back on the bed, Angie blew out one long, exasperated breath. ‘Oh, you have got to be kidding. What — you’re suddenly going to go all upright and honourable again? You don’t want to put a foot wrong, in case you upset your bosses? That’s the old Diane. Things have changed, Sis. Haven’t you noticed? We’re not playing this game by the rules any more. And that was your decision. Don’t forget that.’

Diane shook her head.

‘Okay, so what are you going to do? Shop me? Betray the only people who are trying to help you? Because it’s either that, or you become an accessory.’

Angie stood up. Finally, Diane forced herself to look at her.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘I’m going to leave you to think about it. There’s the file. It’s all yours. Now it’s up to you whether you read it or not.’

‘Angie — ’

But her sister was on her way to the door.

‘You know how to get hold of me, if you want to talk about it.’ Angie paused in the doorway. ‘But if you don’t want to, Diane — well, that’s fine too.’

So Angie knew someone who worked West Midlands Police headquarters in Lloyd House. She knew them pretty well, too — well enough to persuade them to break every rule in the book.

Fry supposed she ought to feel grateful that someone was on her side, and that person was willing to help her buck the system and achieve proper justice. She touched the front of the file where it lay on the table. She couldn’t quite figure out why that feeling of gratitude didn’t come.

Now she didn’t know what to do. She’d always tried to go by the book, to follow procedures and not put a foot wrong. It was the way she’d planned to advance her career, having sussed out the restrictive times the police service was going through. An insensitive or imprudent comment could damage an officer’s prospects permanently.

Yet she saw officers breaking the rules all the time. And not just back in the nineties when she first joined up. Even now there were people willing to bend the rules, play the system, or totally cross the line. Sometimes they did it for their own benefit, to fund a gambling addiction, or to help out a friend who happened to be on the wrong side of the law. Other times, though, they did it for reasons they might claim were good and honourable ones. Reasons like loyalty, justice, the righting of a wrong that the court system alone couldn’t deal with.

So which situation was this? Was there some honourable justification she could claim for implicating herself in a breach of the rules? Did it really make any difference? The outcome would be the same, if she was found out.

Besides, what was she planning to do with the information? If she’d obtained these names in any other way, what were her intentions? Nothing that was within the rules. She acknowledged that fact to herself for the first time, accepting that a determination had been growing slowly inside her, a bloom of anger that needed an outlet, and which cared nothing for correct procedure.

From the moment she faced that fact, and accepted her own failing, she began to feel an awful lot better.

And who had done this to her? Who had been the Satan who placed temptation in front of her, the person who was so much inside her mind that she knew the exact moment when Diane wouldn’t be able to resist? Who would get their satisfaction from corrupting her principles?

Diane went to the window of her room, looked down into the central square with its fountains. She watched her sister walking away towards Broad Street, striding confidently, not glancing to either side as the bag swung on her shoulder.

After all this time, Angie Fry was no longer the figure that Diane remembered from her past, the older sister she’d worshipped. Now, she was a totally different person. Another broken angel.

Fry opened the case file. The various forms were numbered in order, from MG1, in accordance with the Manual of Guidance.

Form MG1

RESTRICTED WHEN COMPLETE

FILE FRONT SHEET

File Type: Expedited

CPS Office: Birmingham

Anticipated guilty plea? No

And then there were two sections for the defendants’ details:

Defendant’s full name: Darren Joseph Barnes

DOB: 19/07/1981

Male X

Persistent Offender? No

Occupation: Unemployed

PNC Ethnicity code: IC1

Nationality: British

No of TIC(s) (if applicable)

Previous convictions? Yes

Previous cautions/final warning/reprimands? Yes

Defendant’s full name: Marcus Shepherd

DOB: 07/03/1980

Male X

Persistent Offender? No

Occupation: Unemployed

PNC Ethnicity Code: IC3

Nationality: British

No of TIC(s) (if applicable)

Previous convictions? Yes

Previous cautions/final warning/reprimands? Yes

Fry had already committed the names to memory. Barnes and Shepherd. When she first heard them, they’d sounded so innocuous somehow. So rural, even. When she looked at their dates of birth now, she could see that they’d both been teenagers at the time of the attack.

According to their PNC ethnicity codes, one of them was white and the other black. At least, that was the opinion of an arresting officer entering their details on to the Police National Computer. She couldn’t have testified to that herself. It was a detail beyond her recollection.

MG1 concluded with a dated declaration:

I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I have not withheld any information which could assist the defence in the early preparation of their case, including the making of a bail application.

At the bottom it was signed by Gareth Blake as the ‘officer in case’, and by his supervising DCI. Fry turned to the second page, Form MG5. The Case Summary.

Regina v. Shepherd and Barnes

There are three witnesses. One independent witness Louise Jones had an unobstructed view of two males seen running from the scene of the incident. At a subsequent ID parade, Miss Jones made a positive identification of Darren Barnes as one of the males. A second witness Miss Tanya Spiers states that she encountered Shepherd and Barnes at a club later that night with a group of other males, when they boasted that they had ‘done a copper’. Shepherd and Barnes were both previously known to her. The third witness is the IP, who is unable to make an identification.

Officers arrested Darren Barnes and Marcus Shepherd. Barnes stated in his first interview that he had not been with Shepherd at all that night, but said he had heard about the incident. Shepherd stated in interview that he had been with Barnes in the general area, but they had been drinking in a local pub and had not left until around 21.30 hours, when they visited the Sub Zero club in Broad Street, Birmingham. On re-interview, Barnes stated that he had seen Shepherd at the club, but had not been with him at the pub in Digbeth.

I submit this file for review.

There was more, lots more. MG11s for the witness statements, several pages of MG15, the Record of Interview.

WITNESS STATEMENT

(Criminal Justice Act 1967, section 9)

Statement of: Louise Jones

Occupation: Editorial Assistant

This statement signed by me is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that, if it is tendered in evidence, I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything which I know to be false, or do not believe to be true.

I am the above-named person and reside at the address overleaf.

My name is Louise Susan Jones DOB 05/05/1979. At approx 12.15 a.m. I was leaving my place of employment after an evening event. As I walked to my car I looked down the street. I had a clear unobstructed view. I saw two males running away from an area of wasteland near the Connemara pub. The first male was white, skinny build, I would say probably approx five feet eight inches tall. He was wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans. The second male I would describe as much larger in build than the first male and probably six feet tall. He was black. I could not tell what he was wearing, other than a baseball cap. I would recognize the first male if I saw him again. If required to do so I am willing to give evidence and attend court as a witness.

Signed: Louise Susan Jones

Fry was impressed with Miss Jones’ observation. She seemed to have identified the white male. That would have been Darren Barnes, the IC1.

MG15

RECORD OF INTERVIEW

ROTI

Person Interviewed: Darren Joseph Barnes

Place of Interview: Queens Road Police Station

Interviewing Officer(s): DI Blake

Other persons present: DS Sandhu, Solicitor Mr Alderton

DI Blake: Introduction and Caution in accordance with PACE. DI Blake reminds Barnes that he was arrested in connection with an alleged rape near the Connemara pub, Digbeth. Barnes gives his account of his movements on the night.

Barnes: I wasn’t in Digbeth. I wasn’t at the pub. I met up with S-Man (Marcus Shepherd) at the club in Broad Street. No matter what he says.

Blake: We have a witness who states that she saw you running from the scene, Darren.

Barnes: She’s wrong then.

Blake: Did you attack a woman in Digbeth that night?

Barnes: No comment.

Fry flicked impatiently to the end of the interview. Once the ‘no comments’ started, it was a waste of time. Though it wasn’t stated in the transcript, the solicitor must have intervened to steer his client’s responses. With an experienced suspect, it only needed a shake of the head. Nothing that would be recorded on tape.

She checked back to the beginning again. The solicitor was Mr Alderton. She had half expected to see the name of William Leeson printed there. There must be some significance to him, or why did Andy Kewley mention him? The same law firm as Alderton, maybe. She could probably check.

Barnes: No, I told you it weren’t me.

DI Blake: This interview will now be concluded, however, we need to make further enquiries and will be further interviewing you later. Interview concluded.

When Cooper’s call came through, Fry was sitting with the case file closed on the table in front of her, wondering whether she was right to have read it. Had it helped her at all? Had it made her feel any better? She was really no closer to knowing who these people were, these individuals who had become inextricably entangled in her own life. Darren Barnes, Marcus Shepherd, Louise Jones. And the mysterious William Leeson. Not forgetting him.

She drew a pad of the hotel stationery towards her and jotted down the information Cooper gave her.

Marcus Shepherd, also known as ‘S-Man’. A last-known address in Handsworth Wood, a string of cautions and convictions from the age of twelve, but just one spell in prison.

‘There’s a lot of other stuff,’ said Cooper. ‘Date of birth, ethnicity codes.’

‘You can skip those.’

Darren Joseph Barnes, also known as ‘Doors’. Another Handsworth address, an even longer conviction record. Barnes had started his career in crime early, with prosecutions for criminal damage and anti-social behaviour at the age of ten — the youngest you could be charged with a crime in this country.

‘Street names,’ said Fry. ‘They both have street names. Are they members of a gang?’

‘I don’t know, Diane.’

And Fry felt irrationally disappointed that there was so little on Leeson.

‘What was the name of his firm?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t find him. That means he’s not currently practising.’

‘Okay.’

‘So,’ said Cooper. ‘Have you got what you needed?’

‘I really need to know what the problem is with the DNA evidence. What Gareth Blake means by contamination. And what matches were made on the database. But I can’t ask you to get involved any more, Ben. You’ve done your bit. I’m already way out on a limb as it is.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Thanks. I appreciate it.’

‘See you back home some time, then?’ said Cooper.

‘Sorry?’

‘Back here, in Edendale.’

‘Oh right. Yeah. And, Ben — you’re not worrying about this incident on Monday? The girl who drowned?’

‘No, of course not. I’ve got far too much else to do.’

Fry looked at the case file again. She’d been told that a cold case hit had resulted from an arrest of one of the suspects — a routine swab taken from him when he was processed through the custody suite, linking him to the rape years previously through a DNA profile match.

There were two types of sample at issue here. There was a Criminal Justice sample, the DNA collected by rubbing a buccal swab inside a suspect’s cheek to collect skin cells. And there were SOC samples, taken from evidence recovered at a crime scene — blood, hair, semen, saliva.

When a new Criminal Justice sample was added to the National DNA Database it was checked against all Scene of Crime profiles on the database. When a new SOC sample was added, it was checked against all CJ and SOC records. Any that were compatible were reported as a match.

Fry wondered if she knew too much about this process. She wasn’t the average IP, totally ignorant of the criminal justice system, her knowledge of forensics limited to what she’d picked up from CSI: Las Vegas. Most victims would accept what they were told.

But it was true that current DNA profiling methods were very sensitive. It was possible to detect very low levels of DNA, equivalent to approximately fifty cells, and even to detect the DNA present in a single cell.

Fry knew that because of that high sensitivity, there was an increased chance of detecting DNA from more than one person in samples. It might be background DNA, which was everywhere in the environment and couldn’t be avoided. It might be DNA deposited inadvertently by police officers attending the scene after an incident, or collecting samples for analysis. Her own DNA profile was already on the PED, the Police Elimination Database, designed to eliminate DNA left innocently at a scene.

And it went further. DNA could be shed by scientists involved in the analysis, or even by the people involved in production of the laboratory materials. DNA could be accidentally transferred from one item to another somewhere along the line.

DNA from all of these sources was referred to as contamination. That was what Gareth Blake had said — ‘contamination’. Well, that sort of contamination was easily detected in CJ samples and the profile wouldn’t be loaded on to the database. It was less easy to detect contamination in a DNA profile from a crime-scene sample. Contamination at the scene could compromise the lab’s ability to interpret a DNA profile from an SOC sample. Despite all the precautions, contamination still happened.

Contamination. What a wonderful word. If anything or anyone had been contaminated in this process, it was her.

She looked at the notes she’d taken from Cooper’s phone call. ‘S-Man’ and ‘Doors’. Street names were significant. If these two were members of a gang, they would be well known to West Midlands Police. But she needed access to the police intelligence systems to find that out.

‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’ she told herself.

Fry almost laughed. She wasn’t on the inside now, she was an outsider. She couldn’t turn to the PNC any more, and she couldn’t consult the intelligence officer. If she wanted information, there was only one thing to do — ask the right person.