Lost River (25 page)

‘Okay.’

She got out of the car and began to walk towards the bridge. It wasn’t the walk she’d imagined making when she came to Birmingham. She’d pictured herself taking that long walk down the corridor from the witness room to take the stand in a crown court trial. Only a few yards, but a million lonely miles when you were going to face your own demons.

Barnes took no notice of her, even when she came right up to him. She stood carefully a couple of steps away, the best position for defence.

‘Darren Barnes?’ she said.

‘Maybe.’

‘Or should I call you Doors?’

‘And who the hell are you?’

‘You don’t recognize me? Well, no – you wouldn’t. I was never a person to you, was I?’

He looked at her then. ‘You know what? I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.’

‘Let me explain.’

‘No, no explanations. I heard there was something in this for me, right? Or am I being fed some crap?’

‘I want information from you.’

Barnes smiled. His eyes were half closed as he peered at her through his cigarette smoke. He smelled of some expensive deodorant or hair gel.

‘Oh, information is it? I don’t know who you are, but you’ve come to the wrong guy with your bullshit. The last bloke who messed with us ended up in that canal. They needed three bin bags for the bits. You get me?’

‘It’s a river,’ said Fry.

‘What?’

‘It’s not a canal, it’s a river.’

‘Like I care. This is some kind of joke, right?’

Fry could read the contempt in his face. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, and blew the smoke towards her. Then he spat towards her foot.

‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ she said.

‘You,’ he said, ‘ain’t going to do shit.’

Before Fry could react, Angie’s voice came in her ear.

‘Diane, we’ve got more company.’

‘Damn. Don’t leave the car.’

Quickly, Diane turned, and Barnes laughed.

‘Hey, where you going? I was just getting to like you, kind of.’

She ignored him, moving back across the waste ground to the wall. Though she’d brought a torch, the narrow pool of light it cast only seemed to emphasize the blackness outside its reach, to make her isolation total and threatening. From beneath the railway arches, the shadows had begun to sidle towards her, bringing back the memories. They were memories that were too vivid to be erased, too deeply etched into her soul to be forgotten. They merely wallowed and writhed in the depths, waiting for the chance to re-emerge.

Standing back in the darkness, watching, laughing. Voices murmured and coughed. ‘It’s a copper,’ the voices said. ‘She’s a copper’

She’d always known those old memories were still powerful, and ready to rise up from the darkness. Desperately, she tried to count the number of dark forms that loomed around her, some of them mere smudges of silhouettes.

The memories churned and bubbled. Brief, fragmented glimpses of figures carved into severed segments by the streetlights, the sickly reek of booze and violence. And then that rough, slurring Brummie voice that slithered out of the darkness. ‘How do you like this, copper?’ The same taunting laughter moving in the shadows, the same dark, menacing shapes all around. Hands grabbing her, pinching and pulling. Her arms trapped by fingers that gripped her tightly, painful and shocking in their violence.

Then she saw that Angie had left the car and was surrounded, dark shapes on all sides of her. Diane began to run across the waste ground, feeling the energy pouring into her limbs, drawing in the deep breaths that expanded her lungs and quickened her muscles. The group turned towards her, astonished at her charge.

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s another woman.’

She could smell them in the darkness, see their shapes moving towards her as her brain began to flood with the memories. It was the same old film that had run through her mind constantly, no sooner reaching its climactic end than it would start all over again. A great rage came over her, swamping her resistance, and she badly needed something to hit out at.

Automatically, her hands closed into fists, the first two knuckles protruding, with her thumbs locked over her fingers. Concentrate. Pour the adrenalin into the muscles. Get ready to strike.

The men were grinning. They weren’t taking her seriously, even though she was now within reach. One of them turned to reach out towards Angie, and Diane reacted. She hit him in the kidneys, swept his legs from under him and split his nose with the edge of her hand.

With a startled shout, a second man came at her from the left. But he had hesitated too long, and she diverted his fist with a forearm block. She swivelled, cracked his kneecap with a side kick.

Then an arm closed round her throat as she was grabbed from behind. The third man was strong and much heavier than she was. The impact of his body forced her up against the factory wall, trapping her arms and banging her forehead on the bricks. Her face to the wall, she clutched at the sweating brickwork, felt her fingers slither on the greasy surface.

When she was firmly pinned, her attacker shifted his grip. The possibility she was most afraid of was a knife. A miasma of beer fumes filled her nose, and his breath pressed hot on the back of her neck. The feel of his body pushed up against hers and the smell of his sweat-soaked hands brought back all the remembered terrors.

‘Now panic drove her. She took a deep breath through her nose before folding suddenly forward at the waist, kicking backwards into his groin with her heel and driving her elbow
hard into his solar plexus. He grunted in pain, and his grip loosened. She spun round, using a full rising block to break his grip completely.

She found herself facing Darren Barnes again. Diane drew her ASP, and opened it with a flick of the wrist.

‘Do you know who I am now?’

‘You’re the copper.’

‘Who was the third person that night?’

‘You know who it was, though. Right?’

‘No.’

‘You’re a cop. The cops know.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

He gasped, struggling to get his breath as he stared at her, sweat running down his face. He was far too unfit for this. He relied too much on the presence of his friends to protect him.

‘Well, I couldn’t give a shit,’ he said. ‘It was the lawyer guy–’

‘William Leeson?’

‘Yeah, yeah, him. Leeson. We had a meeting set up with him, at the pub.’

‘In the Connemara.’

‘Right. He was working on something big for us. He was our guy, you know.’

‘That’s what you think.’

He shook his head, as if she was talking a different language that he didn’t even want to understand.

‘When we came out of the pub he was right behind us. The guy was hammered. He’d been on the lash with his partner.’

‘Doyle.’

‘Whatever. Then he came to us for his Charlie. He’s a complete coke head, you know?’

‘No, I didn’t know that. So he was with you when you came out?’

‘Like I said, he was right behind us. That guy was completely off his tits. He was pissing himself laughing.’

‘Laughing?’

‘Oh, yeah. I reckon some of the boys were playing it up, just for him.’

Diane recalled figures back in the darkness, watching, laughing. The reek of booze and violence. But there was no memory of Leeson.

‘It was weird, you know?’ said Barnes. ‘It was like, if he hadn’t been there, it might not have happened.’

‘Oh, so it wasn’t your fault? You didn’t know what you were doing?’

‘All I’m saying is, you ought to go after him. Otherwise, a bloke like that will never get what’s coming to him.’

Angie called to her, and Diane turned. While her attention was distracted, Barnes made a grab for her. That was a mistake. She took hold of his arm, straightened it out, and whipped him off his feet so he sprawled across the parapet of the bridge.

‘Keep struggling,’ she said. ‘It would give me quite a lot of pleasure to break your arm. I’ll make you beg in front of your mates. I’ll let them see you crawl to a woman.’

‘Fuck you.’

Then she let him go. She heard a crunch, the crash of a body falling through the broken fence, and a loud splash as something hit the water. The River Rea had swept up more of the city’s debris.

Her sister stood a few yards away, watching her. When Diane saw the expression on her face, she dropped her ASP in the dirt in despair.

‘Angie,’ she said, ‘I can’t do this any more.’

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&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.