Lost River

‘Oh, it’s a type of Indian eggplant. You serve it stuffed.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Why? Are you developing an interest in cooking?’

‘No.’

Jim Bowskill looked at her oddly. ‘You know, you haven’t changed, Diane.’

She turned back to the room. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I remember you when you were a teenager. You were always a very distant girl – so self-contained. It was hard for anyone to get you to open up. No matter how hard we tried, Alice and me, we never really understood what you were thinking, or feeling. You’re the same now. You’re still that teenage girl.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t know what to say.’

‘Do you remember that friend you had at school? Janet Dyson. Your best friend, she was.’

Fry shook her head. ‘Janet…?’

‘Dyson. Pretty girl, with long dark hair. Her father ran the taxi firm.’

‘I don’t remember her.’

‘You must do,’ said Jim. ‘She was your best friend. You used to walk out of school holding hands sometimes. It was very sweet.’

‘How old was I?’

‘Eight or nine.’

‘It’s too long ago, Dad.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve forgotten. We remember everything about you.’

‘Well, you must have kept a photograph album. She’ll be in there, this girl. I bet you’ve been getting it out to remind yourselves before I arrived.’

‘No, no.’ He tapped his temple. ‘It’s all up here. All we have are our memories. They’re what make us the people we are.’

Fry was puzzled. ‘Why are you bringing this girl up now?’

‘Janet Dyson? Well, we wondered why you fell out with her. You suddenly stopped being best friends with her, and we never found out why. You wouldn’t tell us. We thought, well…now that so much time has passed, we thought you might tell us what happened.’

‘Dad, I have no idea.’

He sighed. ‘Still the same Diane.’

‘Dad, honestly – I have no idea. I can’t remember what happened. It can’t have been anything very important, can it?’

‘If you say so, love.’

After a while, Fry looked at her watch and decided it was time to prise herself away. Refusing all offers of more tea, she got up to leave, then hesitated in the doorway.

‘So…is there a photograph album?’

‘Well, I think so,’ said Jim. ‘Do you want to see it?’

She thought for a moment, mentally recoiled as she imagined the album’s contents. Happy, laughing snaps of herself and Angie, skinny teenagers in jeans and puffa jackets. Sunburned on holidays in Weston-super-Mare, dressed up in their best frocks for some cousin’s wedding.

‘Another time, Dad,’ she said.

On the corner of Trinity Road stood a masjid, a community mosque. This was the one that had originally been named the Saddam Hussein Mosque, after the Iraqi leader donated two million pounds to build it. During the first Gulf War, the masjid had been fire-bombed, and excrement wrapped in pages of the Koran had been pushed through the letter box during prayers. So elders had decided to change the name, and now it was simply Jame Masjid, the main mosque.

Just behind it, Fry could see the little parade of shops where Burger Bar Boys in a Ford Mondeo had sprayed bullets from two MAC-10 machine pistols, killing Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis as they left a New Year party, and putting the city firmly in the headlines.

She supposed it was natural for her to worry about Jim and Alice Bowskill living in this area. Everyone worried about their parents. For a moment, she wondered if she ought to check whether they were registered with the Birchfield Dental Practice or the Churchill Medical Centre, if they used the post office here, or the one in Perry Barr. But it didn’t really matter.

Fry turned on to Trinity Road and headed towards Aston. In the few hundred yards drive between the Jame Masjid and Villa Park, she passed the Ozzy Osbourne birthplace. The mosque, football, and heavy metal. Well, that came as close to summing up Birmingham as anything she could think of.

7 (#ulink_027e763f-7652-5215-b693-777122e1c052)

On his way back from the Nields, Cooper called at the Ashbourne section station on Compton. He spotted the blue lamp over its door right next to the Wheel Inn.

Seeing the Wheel reminded Cooper that he’d once had a memorable duty in Ashbourne, many moons ago, when he was drafted in to help police the world’s oldest, largest, longest and maddest football game. Several thousand people turned up every year for Ashbourne’s Royal Shrovetide Football – and that was just the players.

From an objective point of view, the event was basically a moving brawl, which seethed backwards and forwards through the streets of the town, across fields, and even along the bed of the river. The game lasted for two days, with goals three miles apart on opposite sides of the town. If you visited Ashbourne on those days, you had to be careful where you parked your car. Of course, the pubs remained open all day, all the shops and banks boarded up their windows, and some closed completely, making the town look as though major civil unrest was taking place. Which, from a policing point of view, it was. There had been intermittent attempts to ban the game because of its violent nature. But it had been going on for a thousand years now. So that was that.

Cooper remembered the Wheel Inn particularly. The two ‘teams’ – if thousands of people could be referred to as a team – came from the north and south sides of the town and were known as the Up’ards and Down’ards. Compton was Down’ard territory, and the Wheel one of their favourite gathering places before the match.

Inside the station, he didn’t have too much difficulty persuading Sergeant Wragg to let him have copies of the statements from the witnesses to Emily Nield’s death in Dovedale. There was a small sheaf of them, collected by Wragg’s constables as they intercepted members of the public leaving the scene.

‘Emily was a pupil at Parkside Community Junior,’ said Wragg as he gave Cooper the file. ‘I thought a copy of her photograph might be useful.’

‘Thanks.’

The photo was clipped to the first page. In it, Emily Nield was pictured in a green sweatshirt with her school logo, and was grinning cheekily at the camera, with one slightly crooked tooth prominent in her smile.

Seeing the photograph was a shock for Cooper. He hadn’t seen the girl in life, and could not have described her if he’d been asked to. Nor could he have recognized her from the photograph. As far as Cooper was concerned, she bore absolutely no resemblance to the body he’d held in his arms in Dovedale.

But that was what death did to you. In a few tragic moments, Emily Nield had become a different person. Unrecognizable.

‘The son attends Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School here in the town,’ said Wragg. ‘But I suppose you don’t want to know about him.’

The file also included the Nields’ own statements. Cooper had already got their version of events first hand, but he accepted the copies from Wragg and tucked the file under his arm.

‘Thank you for this. It’s appreciated.’

‘No problem. Is there anything I need to know?’

Cooper hesitated, decided he could trust Wragg as a colleague.