Lost River

21

Friday

The next morning, Ben Cooper drove through endless red-brick suburbs, streets so identical that it made him wonder how thousands of Birmingham commuters ever found their way home.

On the map, Birmingham looked like a giant spider’s web, a dense network of roads radiating out in a ragged pattern to absorb the surrounding motorways, M42, M5 and M6. Between the roads, the ground was thick with houses.

Cooper took a wrong turning somewhere as he left the Expressway. He thought he’d probably come off too soon, and was driving through some apparently nameless suburb. He stopped to look at the A to Z and turn round, and found himself sitting in front of a bay-windowed semi in an empty, tree-lined street. Cooper looked around him. Acres of brick and leaded glass. Bitumen-stained fencing, and flower beds full of pansies. This place was so suburban it was almost a caricature of itself. It might look comforting if you belonged here. But it was pretty damn weird if you didn’t.

He knew there must be thousands and thousands of homes like this, out there in the spider’s web. Suburb upon suburb, making up a vast brick blanket that covered most of the West Midlands. Warwickshire had been here once, and part of Staffordshire. Now great chunks of them had been absorbed into the urban sprawl.

While he was stopped, he called Fry’s mobile number.

‘Diane, are you at the hotel?’

‘No.’

‘Where, then?’

‘What do you want to know for? What’s going on, Ben?’

‘I’m coming to see you.’

‘What? Where are you?’

‘I’m in Birmingham. I’m not sure exactly which part.’

‘At the risk of sounding dim — why?’

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘And you couldn’t do it on the phone? You’re not turning into another paranoid, are you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind. Come to Hockley. Warstone Lane, in the Jewellery Quarter. You’ll find it easily enough. Just follow all the police cars.’

A few minutes later, Cooper finally reached the city centre. Its tower blocks, streams of traffic and crowds of pedestrians made him feel he was nothing but a single ant in the middle of a seething ant heap. Well, one insect might be insignificant. But at least that meant it went pretty much unnoticed by the rest of the heap.

It had always seemed to Cooper that city people lived in a permanent sodium twilight. It never really grew dark here, and the stars were invisible. The sky was only a dim void, way up there beyond the tower blocks. And in the daytime, it didn’t seem to get properly light in the shadow of those high-rise buildings. The streets running west to east were too narrow for the sun ever to reach the pavement. So shoppers and office workers gravitated to the open spaces to soak up some rays in their lunch breaks. The cathedral gardens were crowded with people escaping the shadows.

His departure on his rest day hadn’t been popular, particularly when he’d told Liz about it.

‘I’ve got to get right away for a few hours,’ he said. ‘The incident last night really shook me up.’

‘I understand, Ben. It’s been a tough week.’

‘You could say that.’

‘Maybe you ought to take more time off than just a few hours.’

‘No, I’ll be all right. Too much to do.’

‘So where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Birmingham.’

‘Birmingham? You’re kidding. Is this actually work?’

‘Well…I can’t say, really.’

And she didn’t sound happy with the reply.

‘Ben,’ she repeated, ‘why are you going to Birmingham?’

‘Liz — ’

‘Do you think I don’t know that Diane Fry is there?’

Cooper could have kicked himself. Of course she would know that. He bet that Fry’s trip had been the subject of office gossip for days. It might have been better if he’d lied. She would have found him out though, and then it would have been even worse.

But what could he say to Liz now that would smooth things over, yet wouldn’t be a lie?

‘Diane needs my help,’ he said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

‘Simple? You might think so, Ben. But I’m not sure it is.’

DI Blake looked seriously troubled now. His face was creased with disappointment, as if Fry had let him down somehow.

‘Diane,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I remember you as a first-class colleague when we worked together in Aston. Straight as an arrow — that was DC Fry. Always going by the book.’

Fry said nothing. He hadn’t asked a question, so there was no need for an answer. Silence was a weapon that worked both ways.

She’d already been interviewed by members of the Major Incident Unit attending the scene of Andy Kewley’s death. Blake must have been alerted at an early stage, because he arrived before she’d even finished making her initial statement.

Fry watched the West Midlands forensic scene investigators in their white scene suits and blue latex gloves combing through the cemetery, picking among the cider bottles on the moss-covered tombstones. They would be looking for fingerprints, fibres, blood or hair, searching for footprints or weapons. She wished them luck in the tangled undergrowth and broken memorials.

She and Blake were standing at the outer cordon near the RV point. They were prohibited from the scene itself, excluded as unnecessary personnel.

Fry thought of the three principles of crime-scene management — protect, record and recover.

The potential for contamination must be immense. If an item of evidence was vulnerable, the chances were that everyone was going to walk over it. She might have walked over something herself, crushed some fragment of vital trace evidence into the dirt.

‘How was he killed?’ asked Fry. ‘It looked like a head injury to me. But they won’t tell me anything.’

‘Yes, blunt instrument.’

‘He can’t have been dead for long. He liked to be on time.’

‘And you didn’t see anybody?’ asked Blake.

‘No.’

‘So was there some particular reason you were meeting him?’

‘Because he called me and asked me to, that’s all. I covered it all in my statement to the MIU.’

‘Yes, you’re right — it’s not my enquiry. But I worked with Kewley for a while too, don’t forget.’

Fry shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Who would want to attack Andy Kewley?’

‘Well, we get all kinds of people hanging around in places like this. Sociopaths, drunks, drug addicts. Individuals who ought to be in secure accommodation, but who’ve fallen through cracks in the system. They’re drawn to disused areas like old cemeteries.’

‘Oh, I see. You mean it was a random assault? Just some harmless homicidal crank?’

‘I don’t know, Diane. I don’t have any information. What do you think?’

Fry didn’t answer the question. ‘Somebody must have seen Andy arrive, at least.’

‘Uniforms are doing a trawl for witnesses, but my guess is it will be a short list.’

Fry saw Ben Cooper arrive at the outer cordon, looking be-wildered by the extent of the activity in and around the cemetery. She also thought he appeared particularly dishevelled today. His hair fell untidily across his forehead, and she wasn’t sure that he’d even shaved properly this morning.

‘So did this sort of thing always happen when you lived in Birmingham?’ said Cooper when Fry explained the activity.

‘I didn’t live in Birmingham,’ said Fry. ‘I never lived in Birmingham, even when I was at college in Perry Barr, and even when I worked in Aston. I lived in the Black Country, at Warley.’

‘Okay. There’s a difference?’

‘You bet there’s a difference.’

‘I’ll try to remember.’

‘And another thing to remember, Ben — now you’re in the city, you can’t just go around being nice to everybody you pass in the street here. They don’t know who you are, and they won’t like it. You’re liable to get yourself killed.’

‘Stop being nice? Okay. I’ll try to be more like you, then.’

Fry thought she’d misheard him. ‘What?’

But Cooper ignored it.

‘So what do you think is going on, Diane? With your case, I mean?’

‘I really don’t know. I don’t have enough information.’

‘What’s your instinct?’

‘It’s too late for instinct, Ben. Much too late.’

Fry looked at him. For the first time, she noticed that he didn’t look well. It wasn’t just untidiness. He was pale, and there were dark rings under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been sleeping properly for days. His hand shook when he brushed back a lock of hair. She had never seen his hands shake before. Never. He seemed fidgety, and he kicked out irritably at a pigeon which came too close. She wondered what had really made him set off and drive to Birmingham this morning. Was he trying to escape from something back in Derbyshire? Because, if so, he seemed to have brought it with him.

‘How is the new role going, Ben?’ she said. ‘Acting DS.’

‘Oh, fine.’

But he sounded so unsure that he might as well have said the opposite.

‘You can ask me for advice, you know, if you want to. It’s not an admission of weakness.’

‘Well, it’s not the job. It’s just something I’m worried about. The family of this dead girl.’

‘The drowning accident on Monday?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s been bothering you all week, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but the DI thinks I’m worrying about nothing.’

‘Oh no, don’t tell me — you’ve found another lost cause to champion.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t listen.’

Hearing his irritation, Fry immediately regretted her response. She didn’t want him to go away again.

‘No, I’m sorry, Ben. Go on. What about this family?’

Standing near the incident command unit, Cooper told her about the Nield family, and his suspicions, about the ambiguity of the witness statements and his fear that their memories of events couldn’t be relied on. Exactly as he knew it would, just telling Fry about it all helped him to get things clear in his mind. He could detect the weaknesses in his own arguments by watching her face and reflecting on his words. When he’d finished, he knew what he should be doing next, what questions he should be asking. And Fry had hardly needed to say anything.

‘Thanks, Diane,’ he said.

‘I didn’t do anything.’

A woman stepped out from behind the van. Cooper wondered if she’d been there all the time. Fry introduced her as Rachel Murchison, a member of DI Blake’s team. But he could see that she didn’t really look like a police officer.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing,’ said Murchison. ‘You were talking about interference theory, which is an interest of mine.’

‘I didn’t mean to suggest that the witnesses had been deliberately interfered with,’ said Cooper, wondering if he’d said too much in public.

‘No, I know. It’s just a name for it.’

‘Are you a psychologist?’ he asked.

Murchison smiled. ‘Let’s just say, I know the theory.’

‘I’ve been wanting to ask someone about this — the way witnesses perceive things. Why their memories of an incident might contradict each other.’

‘Well, our memories of what we’ve seen are often inaccurate. I mean, they might not actually be what happened. Everyone knows this. When it comes to a court case, your witnesses always contradict each other. Some of them are better left out of the witness box, because they only muddy the water, and then no one knows what to believe.’

‘But they’re not lying,’ said Cooper.

‘No, of course. They’re not lying, just mistaken. Some witnesses see what they want to see. Or they remember what they think you want to them to remember. In a nutshell, that’s interference theory.’

‘So the interference is self-imposed?’

‘In a way,’ said Murchison. ‘As with all memories, our eyewitness memories can be distorted by what we previously knew, which is pro-active interference, or what we subsequently learn — retroactive interference. The distortion of memories has been widely studied. Retroactive interference can result from police questioning, which is well intentioned but can lead to difficulty in accurate recall. Unfortunately, poor interview techniques are all too common.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ said Cooper.

He looked at Fry, then looked away again, hoping she didn’t think that he was referring to her abilities.

‘If you’re interested,’ said Murchison, ‘the classic study on this subject is Loftus and Palmer. They showed eyewitness memory was vulnerable to post-event distortion. In their experiment, it came down to a difference between the questions “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” or “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” Participants asked the first question were convinced they’d seen broken glass. The use of the word “smashed” affected their recollection.’

Cooper nodded. ‘It makes sense. It was what I was thinking anyway.’

‘And you,’ said Murchison. ‘How is your short-term memory?’

‘Now Cooper was taken aback. He hated being so transparent. But people often said his feelings were written on his face.

‘Not good,’ he admitted. ‘Not during these past few days. I get confused about what I saw and what I didn’t.’

‘It’s the result of trauma — that is, of experiencing the child’s death in the river, and being helpless to save her. Short term, you may have re-experiences — flashbacks. You may also get adverse reactions to anything your brain associates with the traumatic event. In this case, water, perhaps?’

Cooper remembered his reluctance to go too near the river in Dovedale. He nodded cautiously, wary of admitting a weakness.

‘It’s perfectly common,’ said Murchison. ‘It should pass in time.’

‘Does it always pass?’

‘Well, not always. If left unacknowledged and untreated, it can develop into full-blown PTSD, and the effects of that can last for years. Occasionally, serious psychological disturbances may result from traumatic experiences in the past. But that’s quite rare.’

‘Now Cooper was interested.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Would it be more common in a child?’

‘Oh, yes. Certainly.’

A few minutes later, Murchison took Fry aside for a quiet word. They stood at the corner of the cemetery, just outside the cordon.

‘Diane, your colleague has a problem,’ she said.

‘You noticed?’

‘There are a lot of small signs.’

‘It’s the incident earlier this week that he just mentioned. The death of the little girl he tried to rescue from drowning.’

Murchison nodded.

‘There should be early intervention after a traumatic incident like that. It can prevent acute stress reaction from developing into full-blown PTSD. What was the level of your critical incident stress management?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

Murchison shook her head. ‘Someone should have taken responsibility. Isn’t this officer part of your team?’

Fry looked across the cemetery at Cooper.

‘Do I still have a team?’ she said.

When Fry was released by the Major Incident Unit, she took Cooper back to her hotel. He looked as though he needed a cup of coffee or two, maybe some food.

‘Ben,’ she said, as they parked their cars in the Brindleyplace multi-storey, ‘how much do you remember of your childhood?’

Cooper turned to her in surprise as he keyed the locks on his Toyota. ‘I remember lots of things.’

‘I mean, what are your earliest memories? How old were you at the time?’

‘Oh, well. There’s a vague memory of crossing a street somewhere in town, with Mum and Matt. It must have been during the summer, because Matt had a wasp land on his hand. I have this picture of him standing there, with his finger out as if he was pointing at something. And he was screaming. He was terrified of getting stung by wasps as a child. I think it’s probably the sound of him screaming that impressed the memory on me.’

‘Matt was a child? But he’s five years older than you, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you must have been…?’

‘Well, Mum was standing behind me. I was in a pushchair.’

‘You weren’t even walking? That means you were, what…two or three years old?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘My God.’

Cooper stopped in the exit to the car park and looked up at the office blocks in Brindleyplace.

‘Why are you asking something like that, Diane?’

‘Well, I realized a strange thing. I don’t have any early memories at all. Nothing as early as you. I don’t even remember my first day at school. That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’

He shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. I think you remember things that were particularly traumatic or especially enjoyable. I don’t remember my first day at school either. But I remember the second day — I didn’t want to go, and I kicked up a real fuss at home that morning. But Mum tricked me into walking past the gates so we could look at all the other children who were having to go in, and then she pushed me into the arms of a teacher. I cried then. That was a real trauma, I can tell you. But I can’t actually remember why I didn’t want to go in the first place.’

‘I can’t picture you crying because you didn’t want to go to school.’

‘I bet you can’t picture me in my school shorts and cap either.’

‘I’d rather not, thanks.’

Cooper gestured at the hotel. ‘Is this where you’re staying?’

‘Oh. Yes. Come on in.’

‘So what brought this on suddenly, Diane? Has your Birmingham visit turned into a trip down Memory Lane?’

‘Sort of. I just keep noticing that other people seem to remember far more than I do. Their memories are clear, right down to the smallest details. I don’t know how they do that. For me, anything that happened more than ten years ago is just a blur. I’ve always taken the view that your memory can only hold a certain amount of information, so it gradually ditches all the old stuff that you don’t need any more.’

‘But there must be some things you remember.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Fry hesitated. ‘Yes, of course there are. A few things.’

‘No happy childhood memories? Well, maybe I shouldn’t ask…’

‘Considering the sort of childhood that I had? No. Well, I suppose you have happy memories of long summer holidays playing in the garden with your pet dog.’

‘Playing on the farm among the cows. But, otherwise, yes.’

When they were seated in the hotel lounge, Cooper looked around to see who was within earshot, reminding Fry too closely of Andy Kewley, whose body now lay in the mortuary.

‘Anyway, I’ve got some news,’ he said. ‘An old friend came up trumps and passed on some information.’

‘Yes?’

But Cooper jumped as someone walked up to their table. Fry looked up and saw Angie.

‘Well, look who it is,’ said Angie. ‘What a surprise.’

Diane couldn’t bear the smile on her sister’s face when she saw Cooper. Angie pulled up another chair and joined them at the table. She looked as though she might start questioning Cooper, or making some joke that only she would find funny. She had to prevent that.

‘Ben was just telling me that he had some information.’

‘Right.’

Cooper looked at her with one eyebrow raised, and she nodded. Angie had to be allowed in.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Well, apparently, the cold case team put all the evidence samples from your assault through the lab again for fresh DNA tests.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And, as a result, it seems they got a new hit — a familial DNA match.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Angie.

‘They widened the search criteria on the national database. Although they didn’t find a direct match to the person who left the scene of crime sample, they identified a family member.’

‘Wait a minute. That means a close relative who was already on the database.’

‘Yes. Probably someone who’d been arrested at some time. A CJ sample taken from a buccal swab. They didn’t even necessarily have to be charged, let alone convicted. They would still be on the database.’

‘It could be an innocent person, then.’

‘Well, maybe.’

Fry knew the DNA database had its own internal algorithms for identifying immediate relatives on the basis of similar profiles. A one-off speculative search approach was used for conducting familial searches, which could throw up parents, siblings, or offspring. This type of search could be used to pursue two lines of enquiry — the identity of an individual who could be a sibling of the offender, or the identity of the offender’s parent or child.

Some time in the not too distant future, she expected that a DNA profile of someone arrested could be statistically linked to more and more relatives like uncles, aunts, cousins, many of whom would not have been arrested.

‘So who was traced by the familial match?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper.

‘Was it Shepherd, or Barnes?’

‘It doesn’t seem to have been either of them.’

‘What? It must have been one or the other. A familial match means either Shepherd or Barnes has a father or brother on the database — that’s what happened, surely?’

‘It seems not, Diane.’

‘But theirs was the only DNA recovered from the scene. Unless…’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes. The new series of tests produced a third DNA profile. Techniques have improved a lot over the last few years. Analysis is much more sensitive now.’

‘A third person at the scene,’ said Fry. ‘A third person.’

Her mind re-ran that confused memory — a figure crouching over her, with a different feel and smell. There was no other way she could disentangle that one recollection from the rest, because it was caught up in the overwhelming flood of sensations — the pain and shock, and fear, the vicious sharpness of the gravel, the bite of the barbed-wire fence, the suffocating darkness.

She had always known there were other figures in the background. She had seen their shadows in the streetlights, heard their voices in the dark. But a third taking part in the attack? Well, there could have been. A third member of the gang, drawn into the assault, urged on by the others. A third person leaving his DNA.

‘A familial match could still mean they linked the third person to Shepherd or Barnes.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘It could have been that. Those are all the details I’ve got so far on the DNA evidence. I’m sorry it isn’t more, Diane.’

‘No, that’s great. You’ve done really well, Ben.’

Angie looked sideways at Cooper before turning to her sister. ‘Did you leave that file in your room, Di? Is it safe?’

‘I left a “Do not disturb” sign on the door.’

‘By the way, I have these, too,’ said Cooper.

He produced the PNC print-outs for Marcus Shepherd and Darren Barnes, with all their details — addresses, dates of birth, ethnicity codes, criminal records. There was also a photograph of Tanya Spiers, obtained from the police computer system. She was the witness who claimed to have known both the suspects, and heard them boasting at a club.

‘Why was she on the PNC?’ asked Fry.

‘She was arrested at some time for soliciting, and outraging public decency,’ he said. ‘Actually, I feel sorry for her.’

‘Why?’

‘She looks as if she’s gone through a lot of tragedy in her life. It’s her eyes — they’re very sad.’

Angie laughed. ‘No, Ben. It’s too much crack and vodka that makes your eyes look this way.’

Cooper lowered his head, as if embarrassed by Angie’s laughter.

‘So what’s next?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ agreed Angie. ‘That’s a good question. What’s next?’

Diane gazed out of the hotel windows at the fountains splashing in the square, and the office workers moving backwards and forwards in front of 3 Brindleyplace.

‘Andy Kewley was killed because he knew something, and was about to give it away,’ she said. ‘And, if Andy was right, there’s one person central to all this. His name is William Leeson.’