Lost River

25

Saturday

This morning, Cooper was taking a trip into the past of the Nield family. Last night had been exhausting. He’d come home from Birmingham already tired, and the bust-up with Liz had ended badly, with tears and the slamming of his front door. It had been inevitable from the moment he walked into his flat.

Soon, he would have to do something about his relationship with Liz. He felt like a coward to be avoiding the issue right now. But a day or two might make a difference. Things would be calmer, at least. Meanwhile, there was work to do.

To reach Wetton, Cooper had to drive past the turning to Dovedale and through the estate village of Ilam, with its Alpinestyle cottages and the sound of sheep where other villages had traffic. Coaches from Norfolk and Birmingham were parked up at the Dovedale entrance. A farmer on a quad bike moved his flock up the road.

For more than twenty-four hours now, he’d been haunted by the content of Alex Nield’s profile on War Tribe, his secret little messages that could be intended for no one except himself. In his online world, well away from the eyes of his parents, the boy seemed to be revealing his obsessions, the inner turmoils that were troubling his teenage life. u were born wrong n u must die!!!!!

What had put that idea into his head? It was more than just an idle threat, it sounded like something he’d heard, or words that had been said to him personally. Who must die? Who had been born wrong?

And there was the final bit of code:

LOST

LOST

LOST

LOST RIVER

It could be a reference to the River Dove, to the events in Dovedale last Monday. Cooper had no way of knowing when Alex might have updated his profile. But his instinct told him there was something much deeper here, and much older. It dated to the Nields’ time in Wetton, the village whose name Alex Nield couldn’t even bear to hear spoken.

Despite its Ashbourne postal address, Wetton was actually in Staffordshire. Strictly speaking, that meant it was out of Cooper’s jurisdiction. But, of course, the people involved in this case were very much his.

This was a typical limestone village, an old farming community with pretty cottages, converted barns, and a scattering of B amp;Bs. A few holiday lets were owned by the Chatsworth Estate, the Duke of Devonshire’s tentacles reaching even here. In the centre of the village stood a pub, Ye Olde Royal Oak, famous for originating the annual Toe Wrestling Championship. Another quirky English sport, like the Ashbourne football game on the smallest of scales.

Like the streets in Ashbourne, most of the cottages seemed to be named after plants. Vine, Laburnum, Sycamore, Rose. It was funny how little things gave away the fact you were in a different area. Here, it was the brown wheelie bins of Staffordshire Moorlands, replacing the green of Derbyshire Dales.

The Nields had lived on a quiet lane at the Leek Road end of the village. The house wasn’t far from the village hall, which looked as though it had once been the village school. Probably another casualty of falling numbers, families forced out of the villages by rising house prices.

Stable House was solid and stone-built, with a double frontage and big sash windows. It had that wonderful Georgian symmetry that gave even the most humble home a bit of character. The slopes of Wetton Hill rose behind it. Given a choice between this and the executive home in Ashbourne the Nields occupied now, Cooper knew which he would go for.

The Ashbourne to Alstonefield bus passed through Wetton, the Glovers 443 route. But the morning and afternoon runs for Queen Elizabeth’s School didn’t travel as far as Wetton. They stopped at Ilam Cross.

For a child like Alex Nield that would mean a walk home of…what? Nearly four miles, he guessed. Up Ilam Moor Lane, through the hamlet of Stanshope, and across the Wall Ditch before you’d even come in sight of Wetton. Not very likely. Country kids might have done that at one time, but not in this day and age, with too much traffic on those narrow roads and the dangerous temptation to accept a lift from the wrong person. No, there would have to be someone to pick a child up from Ilam Cross. A car waiting at the roadside near the bridge.

But the lack of a school bus was because Wetton lay in Staffordshire, of course — and therefore outside the Queen Elizabeth’s catchment area. This might have been the Nields’ reason for moving into Ashbourne, to qualify Alex for attendance at a better school. Parents moved house for those reasons all the time. Well, maybe.

There was no point in talking to the people who lived at Stable House now. Chances were, they had never known the Nields, except as names on a conveyance. The neighbours were the folk he needed to speak to.

Next door, separated by a garden, was a house called Oak Tree Cottage. This had been part of a farm, too. There were still derelict outbuildings behind the house, windowless, with grass growing from the gutters. Cooper sniffed. Someone nearby had a wood-burning stove. The smell was so distinctive, and so evocative.

Cooper walked up the path to Oak Tree Cottage. He took no notice of the mock Georgian front door. In these parts, front doors were just for show. The truth was always round the back.

The woman who answered the door introduced herself as Mrs Challinor. She’d lived in Wetton all her life, and her parents before her. She’d married a local man, too. Generations of her ancestors probably lay in the churchyard over there. And she remembered the Nields very well. Of course she did. It was only two years since they left.

‘They live in the town now, don’t they?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Cooper.

‘Is this to do with the little girl’s accident?’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘They must be devastated.’

‘It’s been very upsetting for them.’

‘I never talked to the parents all that much. He was out all day, and sometimes in the evening as well. She was a bit quiet, too. But then, she had the children.’

‘Alex and Emily. And the older girl…’

‘Lauren,’ said Mrs Challinor. ‘That was her name.’

‘Yes, Lauren.’

‘A bit wild, she was. But that’s teenagers for you, isn’t it?’

Cooper was in her kitchen, feeling too warm in front of the wood-burning Esse.

‘What exactly do you mean by “wild”?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I couldn’t say really. But I know they had some problems with her. I could hear the arguments from here sometimes.’

‘Lauren arguing with her parents?’

Mrs Challinor frowned. ‘More the parents shouting at each other. It disrupted the family altogether, I think.’

‘But Lauren left eventually, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. I believe she walked out and never came back. Very sad.’

‘What about the boy? Alex?’

‘He always seemed a perfectly normal little boy. Friendly, inquisitive, lively.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, until the older girl left. He seemed to change then. I suppose he was very close to her. Family bust-ups can have a bad effect on small children, can’t they? Very, very sad.’

‘So did you see much of the children when they were here?’

‘Well, they were all at school, of course.’

‘What about during the summer holidays?’

‘Oh, they used to spend all their free time by the river.’

‘The river?’

‘Down at Wetton Mill.’

Cooper tried to picture a map of the local landscape in his head. The courses of rivers were unpredictable in this area, but he was pretty sure he’d come about three miles west of Dovedale to reach Wetton, crossing the plateau over Ilam Moor.

‘Wetton Mill? That wouldn’t be the Dove, would it?’

‘No, it’s the River Manifold. It runs past Wetton Mill, and joins the Dove at Ilam.’

‘Yes, thank you.’

As he left, Mrs Challinor came to the gate with him.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘Why don’t you leave them alone?’

Cooper shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that.’

But sometimes things were best left alone. Like the ‘do not disturb’ sign Fry had hung outside her hotel room door. Don’t ask too many questions, don’t dig up the memories. Let the past rest in peace.

Should he do that? As he walked back into the centre of the village, Cooper considered what his next move should be. He could do what DI Hitchens had told him to, and leave the whole thing alone. It would be the best thing for his own career. But it wouldn’t help him to resolve the craving inside him for answers, the need for an explanation that had lodged in his brain from the moment he held Emily Nield’s body in his arms.

Alex Nield needed to do that, too. He couldn’t go on escaping into his fantasy online world for ever. One day, he would have to face reality. And, if he wasn’t prepared for it, reality could destroy him.

Cooper wished he’d found out more from Lauren. He ought to have kept her back and stopped her disappearing from the churchyard in Ashbourne so quickly. He badly wanted to ask her whether she was the person who’d left the unnamed floral tribute. He felt sure that she was, but craved confirmation. And there was another question he longed to put to her. What had happened on the thirtieth of June, that she would remember it for ever?

But it had been the wrong place and the wrong time. And now he might never track Lauren down again. He could only hope that she’d be drawn out of the woodwork again by something she’d heard.

His phone buzzed, and a number came up he didn’t immediately recognize. He answered it anyway.

‘Oh, Carol. Hi. Thanks for getting back to me again. Have you got some more?’

He listened to Parry for a few moments, a frown forming on his face.

‘Really? That doesn’t seem to make any sense. Are you sure? Well, okay. Thanks.’

Cooper ended the call thoughtfully, making a mental note to contact Fry with this piece of news soon. At least he would seem to be helping. But not just now. He had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it one bit.

In Wetton, the clock of St Margaret’s church was discreetly chiming the half-hour. A dog barked, and children laughed in the play area.

At the top of Church Brow was a working farm, judging by the rumble of tractor engines and the smell of slurry. But their barns had been converted to holiday cottages. Beyond the farm, he saw a walkers’ trail headed over the hill towards Ecton and the remains of its copper mines, which had once supplied half the world’s demand. Ecton Hill was almost unique in this area. Well, a copper mine in the middle of leadmining country? To those old miners, it must have seemed like a miracle, a red fountain in the midst of a grey landscape. Even now, its existence was an anomaly.

Ecton’s copper mines had been a real money spinner, too. But of course, the land owner had made all the profit. In this case, it had been the Duke of Devonshire, a man who was literally the owner of all he surveyed. The proceeds from the mines in the eighteen century were enough to enable the fifth Duke to build the Georgian crescent at Buxton.

If he moved to Wetton himself, Cooper supposed he would choose to live in the Old Police House near Ewe Dale Lane, where a blue lamp still hung over the door and a set of stocks stood in the garden, decorated with shackles. Those were the days.

Seeing it reminded Cooper of the previous night, when he got home to Edendale. In his flat, it had occurred to him to log on to his War Tribe account, to see if he’d been accepted into a tribe. But he’d been punished for being such a noob. SmokeLord had already slaughtered his soldiers, knocked down his wall, and conquered his city. It was now part of Alex Nield’s growing empire. He’d renamed it Powder Hut. That was probably some obscure insult.

The drive from the village down to Wetton Mill was quite a white-knuckle ride. Cooper found a narrow single-track road all the way, through dense banks of cow parsley and meadow buttercup, camouflaging the dry-stone walls on either side. The road was barely wide enough for the Toyota to pass without swiping lumps off the vegetation. On this kind of road, it was best to keep an eye out for passing places. And pray that you didn’t meet a car coming the other way.

At the bottom of Leek Road, he drove over the bridge at Redhurst Crossing and through the open pastures below Ossoms Hill to the Manifold Trail. It was incredible to think that this narrow pathway alongside the Manifold had been a rail line once. It was a re-surfaced section of the old Leek and Manifold Light Railway, which had carried milk churns from Ecton Diary and passengers to the tourist attractions along the route. High on a limestone crag, he glimpsed one of those attractions — the dark mouth of Thor’s Cave.

Cooper pulled the car over at the first bridge and parked it off the road. He would have to walk from here to see the river properly.

As soon as he got out of his car, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck go up. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The scene was very quiet and peaceful. The only sounds were the chattering alarm call of a blackbird that he’d disturbed from the bushes, and the whirr of a pheasant on the hillside above.

He looked around, wondering if he was sensing the presence of someone else nearby. But there was no one around, not a soul. Not a car, nor even a bicycle. No one walking the Manifold Trail — not within sight or earshot, anyway. So why did he feel so uneasy?

Walking towards the first bridge, he couldn’t shake the feeling off. His own footsteps on the trail sounded wrong. It was as if the whole of the valley was holding its breath, waiting for him to do something, to speak, shout, make some kind of noise to break the spell.

Then he came round the bend and looked over the parapet of the bridge, and saw the reason for it. The absence of noise should have warned him earlier. It wasn’t exactly a silence, but a sound that had been missing from the background for the past few minutes. And now it was absent from the foreground too. Without the sound of rushing water, the call of the blackbird sounded more piercing, the whirr of the pheasant so much louder. It was unnatural.

In Wetton, Mrs Challinor had talked about the River Manifold running through here. But Cooper could see there was a problem. He was looking at an empty river bed. It was bone dry, littered with desiccated branches and dried-out boulders. Its stones were as dry as if they’d never seen water.

The muddy edges told a different story, of course. There had been water here once. But right now, the fact was inescapable. The river had gone.