Lost River bcadf-10

by Stephen Booth

‘I’m not sure I do, Andy.’

  ‘Damn it, I can’t make it any clearer,’ he said irritably ‘Look — anybody can get tossed aside, if it suits them. Justice is a slippery concept these days. You need to watch your back, that’s what I’m saying. I gave my statement, Diane, that’s all I can do.’

  Fry stared at him, wondering whether he’d gone completely off the rails since he retired. Leaving the job took people in different ways. It seemed as though Kewley might have developed some kind of conspiracy obsession, or paranoid delusion. Probably he couldn’t cope with the fact that he was no longer on the inside, not a member of the tribe any more. It was that primal instinct again. A desperation to belong. A craving to be part of the game.

  Kewley took a breath, looked anxious at his own outburst.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘who’s dealing with your case now?’

  ‘Gareth Blake.’

  ‘Blake? I remember him when he was a young DC, fresh behind the ears. Pain in the neck he was then. I don’t suppose he’s changed much?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. We worked together for a while, but that was years ago.’

  ‘Gareth Blake…a DI now, isn’t he? In fact, I hear he’s well on his way to making DCI in the not too distant future. Yes, he’s definitely got his foot on the ladder, that one. He wouldn’t want anything to muck up his pristine record at this point, would he?’

  Fry looked at him. ‘What are you saying? Has Blake got something to hide?’

  Kewley touched the side of his nose — a conspiratorial gesture that he somehow managed to make look obscene.

  ‘You know what they say — the higher a monkey climbs up the tree, the more you see of his arse.’

  He laughed, and turned away. It was a signal that she wouldn’t get any more out of him on that subject. Not right now, anyway. She might need some kind of pressure she could bring to bear. But that was for another day.

  ‘I’ll leave first,’ said Kewley. ‘If you could just give it a few minutes.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Fry turned her back, so that she didn’t watch him leave. The head of a broken angel lay at her feet, its blank eyes pressed into the grass, face mottled with damp. A magpie hopped among the graves. An airliner growled overhead towards Elmdon. Counting the seconds till she could get away from this smell, she waited alone in the cemetery.

  Half an hour later, Fry stood on the corner of Thornhill Road in Handsworth, and watched Andy Kewley’s car turn off the road under a line of maple trees. He pulled up to a set of blue gates on Golds Hill Road. After a moment, his BMW disappeared as it entered the car park behind the Victorian police station.

  Thornhill Road, Handsworth. F3 OCU. Why did numbers and letters stick in her mind so well? By the time she’d put in thirty years’ service, she’d have a brain clogged with acronyms.

  Her phone rang.

  ‘Did you track him?’

  ‘Yes, he went into the nick on Thornhill Road.’

  ‘I thought he looked shifty.’

  ‘Where are you now, Sis?’

  ‘Still at the Metro station.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up in a few minutes.’

  Angie was a stranger to Andy Kewley. After he left the cemetery, Angie had tailed Kewley back to the Jewellery Quarter Metro station. He hadn’t expected to be followed going back. Just one stop north, he’d got off again at Soho Benson Road station, where he’d collected a blue BMW from the car park and driven up Factory Road towards Solo Hill and the white dome of the Gurdwara Nishkam Sewak Jatha.

  Diane had picked his BMW up travelling on Soho Road. By then, she’d been pretty sure where he was heading.

  She walked back down Thornhill Road, past the glass walls of the Community Roots enterprise centre, and emerged on to Soho Road, the heart of Birmingham’s Little India. It was solid with traffic, all the way down from the Gurdwara. The next block was full of Asian shops: Bollywood Connections, Karishma Jewellers, the State Bank of India. A group of Indian girls sat on the wall outside the City College annexe. A Muslim with a long beard came out of Handsworth Library clutching a handful of Urdu books.

  Fry hadn’t felt herself to be so much in a city for a long time. Even the maple trees had something urban about them. There had been a pub here, the Frighted Horse. An M amp;B house, she was sure. But the building on the corner was boarded up, plastered with posters for a kick-boxing contest. She supposed the pub no longer fit so well among the sari shops, costume jewellers, and halal chicken takeaways.

  A few hundred yards down, old men in snow-white turbans and grey beards stood outside the Sikh Gurdwara. Fry thought the complex added a bit of architectural class to Soho Road. They said that anyone could walk in at lunchtime and sit down in front of a metal dish full of chapattis and chickpeas. Inside the Gurdwara, the pages of the Sikh scriptures, the Guru Grantb Sahib, were recited continuously around the clock, every day of the year.

  She picked up a leaflet that someone had tossed aside near the bus shelter. It listed the Five Evils, the pancadokb of Sikh Scripture — the major weaknesses of the human personality. Only five? She turned the leaflet over. Oh yes — the common evils far exceeded five in number, it said. But these were the main obstacles in man’s pursuit of the moral and spiritual path. Kam, krodb, lobh, moh and ahankar. Lust, rage, greed, emotional attachment, and ego.

  Fry dropped the leaflet into a litter bin. They were weaknesses, all right. All of them. Maybe she should go into the Gurdwara and listen to some readings from the Guru Granth Sahib. She might learn something.

  But there was another weakness that wasn’t mentioned, one that she was as prone to as anyone else.

  Too much trust.

  12

  Examining Fry’s desk for some files he needed, Cooper came across the latest issue of Grapevine magazine, produced by the British Association of Women Police. He picked it up, feeling a bit guilty about even looking at it, since he was a man.

  According to an item on the cover, West Midlands Police had been included in The Times list of the ‘Top Fifty Places Women Want to Work’ for the third year running. Well, if it was such a great organization to work for, why had Diane Fry bothered coming to Derbyshire?

  But he knew the answer to that. He’d known it within a few days of meeting her, after her transfer to E Division. She’d blurted out the truth one afternoon on a hillside overlooking a Peak District village. He hadn’t known what to say to her then. He wouldn’t really know what to say now.

  He wondered how she was getting on in Birmingham, whether she would call anybody in Edendale to keep them up to date. Who was there that she might call? Not him, anyway.

  In Ashbourne, the Nields looked less glad to see him than they had before. Of course, they’d heard about the anonymous letter, although they didn’t get the Eden Valley Times here in Ashbourne. Cooper had found that out as soon as he phoned them. They’d been trying to get hold of him for hours, they said. Their messages were probably on his desk somewhere.

  ‘A disturbed person,’ said Robert Nield, when Cooper was seated in their lounge. ‘An attention seeker. It’s very sad, really.’

  ‘They need help,’ added Dawn, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. ‘When you find out who it is, they should see a psychiatrist.’

  Cooper wondered what Mrs Nield had been busying herself with. He bet there was always something that needed doing. And if it didn’t, she would do it anyway. Keeping herself occupied.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how we can go about finding who sent the letter — unless you have any ideas yourselves?’

  They shook their heads in unison.

  ‘No idea,’ said Nield.

  ‘No disgruntled members of staff, perhaps? Somebody you sacked recently?’

  ‘I don’t often sack people. Staff members leave occasionally, but of their own accord. We’re quite a little family at Lodge’s. Any problems we have, we sort them out among ourselves.’

  Quite a little family. Cooper looked ar
ound the living room, wondering what Mr Nield’s idea of a happy little family was, in terms of his staff. Well organized and hard working, no doubt. But whether they were happy — that was a different matter. None of the rooms he’d seen in this house looked as though they’d ever had children in them, other than Alex’s bedroom.

  ‘Who’s looking after the store at the moment?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I have a good assistant manager. David Underwood. He’s perfectly capable, and he knows he can phone me at any time.’

  ‘That’s lucky.’

  ‘I believe in delegation. It’s an essential part of being a good manager.’

  Dawn was turning back to the kitchen, but paused to speak to Cooper.

  ‘Oh, Alex said you should go up and see him again if you came back.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I think you must have showed some interest in what he was doing. I’ve never understood any of it myself.’

  ‘He attends Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, Alex is in Year Nine at the moment. He’s very clever, you know. He’s already decided what he wants to do next year. He’s going to study for a DiDA.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘A Diploma in Digital Applications. It’s equivalent to four GCSEs. That’s one of the reasons we wanted him to go to Queen Elizabeth’s, so he had the chance of a DiDA.’

  Upstairs, Cooper looked at the closed doors on the landing. One still bore Emily’s name on a little plaque decorated with pink flowers. For a moment, he thought about opening the door to peek in, or asking the Nields if he could see their daughter’s room. But he decided that he didn’t want to see it. The sight of her clothes and toys might turn Emily into a real, living person, and the idea was unsettling.

  He found Alex fidgeting expectantly, perhaps knowing that he’d arrived and was in the house talking to his parents.

  Unsurprisingly, War Tribe was on the screen of his PC, the representation of a city with roofs and battlements. Looking closer, Cooper saw that there was movement in the city. A tiny flag waving on a tower, a soldier pacing up and down, a workman sawing at a bench outside a building.

  ‘How’s the game going?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re going to be in a war,’ said Alex. ‘Look.’

  He clicked a link, and a map appeared, variously coloured blocks on a grid. Cooper guessed they represented other players’ cities in the neighbourhood.

  ‘Who are the bright red ones?’ he asked.

  ‘Our tribe’s enemies. Look, they’re near me, on the edge of Continent 34. Turks.’

  ‘Turks?’

  ‘Yeah.

  ‘You mean that’s their tribe?’

  ‘No, they’re Turks. Aggressive and well organized, those Turks. You can see them starting to expand already, look. They grab the biggest barbs and conquer the tribeless players. They’ll be coming for my cities soon, if they think I’m vulnerable. First there’ll be scouts to suss me out, and maybe a few raiding parties. Before you know it, they’ll be swarming all over me.’

  ‘You’re losing me a bit,’ said Cooper. ‘Barbs?’

  ‘Barbarian villages. The unoccupied ones, that don’t belong to any player. You can take those over and expand your empire.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘If you don’t take them, someone else does. And if they get bigger than you, they’re a threat. Bigger players try to bully you.’

  ‘Can’t you try diplomacy?’ said Cooper, though it sounded even to him like a stab in the dark.

  Alex shook his head. ‘Sometimes. But there’s never any point in trying to talk to the Turks. All you get back is gibberish. If they can’t speak English, they shouldn’t be on the UK server really, should they? That’s in the rules. English is the official War Tribe language, even if the guys who run it seem to be German, and some of the player guides are in German too. It’s a bit confusing sometimes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. The boy was talking too fast now for him to follow, gabbling excitedly. He might as well be talking gibberish himself.

  ‘Oh, well. Everyone understands battle-axes, whatever language they speak,’ said Alex.

  ‘Right. Battle-axes.’

  ‘An army of berserkers will go through any defence. A few battering rams against the walls, and it’s rape and pillage all the way. My tribe can really kick some Turkish ass.’

  Cooper felt his eyebrows gradually going up, and tried to control the expression before Alex saw it. If the boy thought he was shocked or disapproving, he would clam up. He felt sure, though, that Dawn Nield would not like to hear her clever, studious son talking enthusiastically about rape and pillage, and kicking Turkish ass. This was definitely a private world of Alex’s own that he’d been privileged to share for a few minutes.

  ‘If we get our act together, that is,’ said Alex. ‘We have to work together if we’re going to beat off the Turks.’

  And that was what it was all about, Cooper supposed — working together. Being part of a tribe. You needed support from your tribe mates when it was your walls that the rams were hitting, your city that the axemen were pillaging. Without support from your tribe, you were dead.

  Alex paused, feeling perhaps that he’d said too much.

  ‘Sometimes, it feels like a lot more than just a game,’ he said, with a thoughtful tone entering his voice.

  Cooper nodded. ‘I actually wanted to ask you about your photography while I’m here,’ he said. ‘I hear you’re pretty good.’

  ‘I like playing around, that’s all. Doing stuff with the editing programs.’

  ‘When you were in Dovedale on Monday, did you notice the money trees in near the river?’

  ‘What, the ones with the coins in them?’

  ‘Yes. They call them money trees.’

  ‘I saw them.’

  ‘I bet you took some photographs, didn’t you?’

  Alex nodded. ‘Do you want to look at some?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  The boy minimized the War Tribe screen, and opened some photo-management software that created a slideshow of images. Shots of hillsides slid by. The sky, water, rocks — and the familiar outlines of the Twelve Apostles. They were definitely in Dovedale now. Some of the images had been digitally manipulated — the balance of light and shade altered to accentuate a shape, startling colour adjustments turning the dale into a landscape from another planet. In one striking composition, two images had been overlaid, with the knot holes of gnarled bark creating a ghostly face on a limestone cliff.

  Finally, Alex paused the slideshow at a picture of a money tree.

  ‘Do you know why people do that?’ said Cooper. ‘Hammer the coins into the tree? It’s for luck.’

  They both sat looking at the photograph. Hundreds of coins banged into the wood over decades, maybe centuries. Generations of people trekking into Dovedale and taking the trouble to add their contribution to the money tree, hoping for some improvement in their lives. Better health, the right partner, an end to some despair that was blighting their existence.

  ‘There’s a lot of luck in that tree,’ said Cooper.

  Alex was silent for a moment. ‘Well, there should have been.’

  Finally, Cooper thought he detected a sign of emotion, the slight crack in his voice that suggested his younger sister had meant something to him, that her death had been traumatic and was causing him to grieve. He wondered if the boy’s parents had thought about getting him some counselling, or even trying to get him to open up about it themselves — or whether they were too caught up in their own concerns.

  Someone ought to suggest it to them. An incident like the drowning of Emily Nield could traumatize a boy of Alex’s age, and cause psychological problems months or years down the line. His behaviour could be seriously affected. Who knew what he might do at some future date, if his complex feelings were bottled up and never found a natural release?

  Alex had started the slideshow again. Cooper watched more inanimate object
s appear and slide by. Patterns, light and shade. Those were the things that interested Alex Nield. None of his images included people, not even his own family. Perhaps especially his own family.

  Cooper looked at his watch.

  ‘Well, thanks a lot for your time, Alex. I’m going to have to get back to work now.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll see you another time, though.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘At least you’re easy to find here in Ashbourne. You used to live in Wetton, didn’t you?’

  And Alex froze. Almost literally. His expression became a mask, all friendliness gone. His face had closed against the world, and particularly against Cooper.

  All the time he’d been talking to the boy, Cooper had been aware that he might say the wrong thing at any moment. He’d felt as though he was skating on thin ice. And now he’d fallen through.

  Back in the sitting room, he raised the subject of Alex with his parents. They agreed that they ought to consider Alex’s welfare and not let him sit alone in his room for hour after hour. ‘After the funeral,’ said Dawn, pronouncing the words as if she was saying After the end of the world. The inference seemed to be that nothing else mattered, or even existed, until that event had been faced up to.

  ‘And you haven’t any idea who might have sent the anonymous letter?’ said Cooper, looking at the line of framed photographs on the window ledge.

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  ‘Or what the letter might have been referring to?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Nield, almost snapping the answer. ‘It’s just somebody with delusions.’

  ‘About Emily,’ said Cooper. ‘Could she be badly behaved sometimes? A troublesome child?’

  ‘No. What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’

  A school photograph of Alex was prominently displayed in the window. He was wearing his Queen Elizabeth’s uniform, a navy blue blazer and school tie. But Cooper was looking for photographs of Emily. He found a family group, with Robert and Dawn, Alex and Emily — and a teenage girl of about sixteen, with distinctive black eye make-up and a purple streak in her hair.