And Murfin was right there werent many of them, just a dozen or so. Some of the individuals could immediately be discounted on grounds of age. How did you get yourself on the Sex Offenders Register at the age of sixteen? It didnt bear thinking about.
Then Cooper stopped turning the pages. A face was looking out at him, the usual full face and profile shots taken in a police custody suite on arrest. The face itself was unremarkable. It was the representation of a middle-aged man with receding hair and a hint of grey stubble, a man who could pass unnoticed in any street. Cooper realized it was the eyes he remembered. They were calculating eyes, watchful and suspicious of the world. In some circumstances, they might look like the eyes of a predator.
Sean Deacon, he said.
Oh, him, said Murfin. A nasty piece of work. He has a record of violence towards children. His partner kicked him out when she found out he was physically abusing her two children.
How old were they?
Four and six, said Murfin.
The address given for Deacon was in Wirksworth, about ten miles northeast of Ashbourne, on the other side of Carsington Water. So Murfin had extended the search criteria anyway, and had pulled out Sean Deacon at the second attempt.
Does he have a job at the moment? Where does he work?
At the Grand Hotel. Hes a kitchen worker.
What here in Edendale?
Absolutely.
Cooper had an image of a man slouching from an interview room to a cell in the custody suite at Edendale, a man who turned to look at him over his shoulder as he passed. It was that tilt of the head hed recognized in Dovedale, a face half turned away in shadow, but the angle of a cheek and the slope of a shoulder were distinctive. You might change your face, but it was difficult to hide the way you moved.
I think I was involved in an arrest, he said. Or at least an interview.
You have a good memory.
For faces, yes.
Handy.
If hes on the register, he must have been convicted under the Sex Offenders Act since 1997.
Oh, yes. He was later convicted for attempting to abduct a seven-year-old from a park in Matlock. He was given four years in prison, spent thirty months inside, came out on licence, and now hes on the Sex Offenders Register.
And he was watching children in Dovedale on Monday, said Cooper.
Is this him, then?
Yes, this is him.
Cooper was feeling quite shaky now. It would pass, he knew. If he gave it a few hours, and got a good nights sleep, hed be absolutely fine, just as hed told Superintendent Branagh.
Then he thought about going home to Welbeck Street. And it occurred to him that home, on his own, might be the place where he would feel worst.
At the end of the morning, he walked out of E Divisional Headquarters and crossed the road, passing the back of the main stand at Edendale FC. The last match of the UniBond League season had been played a few weeks ago, but it wouldnt be long before the preseason friendlies started at the beginning of July. Some Yorkshire side from Sheffield or Barnsley would be the first visitors, hed heard. Then a local derby with Buxton or Matlock.
At the end of the morning, he walked out of E Divisional Headquarters and crossed the road, passing the back of the main stand at Edendale FC. The last match of the UniBond League season had been played a few weeks ago, but it wouldnt be long before the preseason friendlies started at the beginning of July. Some Yorkshire side from Sheffield or Barnsley would be the first visitors, hed heard. Then a local derby with Buxton or Matlock.
He didnt follow the Edendale soccer that closely, but it was useful to be aware of big matches from a policing point of view. Also, it helped to know when you wouldnt be able to find anywhere to park your car on a Saturday.
Liz Petty had dashed over from Buxton, still in her blue sweater, and met him for lunch in Mays Cafe off West Street, in a lane running steeply downhill to Edendales Clappergate shopping centre.
Hed first met her when she was a SOCO in E Division, and theyd abseiled into a disused quarry together looking for evidence. Shed been bundled up in overalls and a water-proof jacket then, with a red helmet pulled over her eyes. But he remembered a conspiratorial smile as she came alongside him on the face of a quarry, the smile shared by rock climbers. Her face had been flushed with cold and excitement, and her eyes shone with pleasure from under her helmet. That was the moment he realized he wanted to know her better.
Things had moved slowly after that, as these things did. It was only on his birthday one year that he began to see their relationship differently, when among the cards left on his desk was one from Petty, signed Hugs, Liz. Their initial date had followed soon after that, dinner at the Raj Mahal in Edendale, and their first chaste kiss, her skin cool and slightly damp from the rain.
He really cared for her now, and hed always taken it for granted that he would get married and settle down one, day, probably have a couple of kids, just like Matt. Was Liz the one he would be married to when that happened?
Acting DS? she said. Wow. But a permanent promotion would be great.
Yes, of course it would.
That would help a lot.
Cooper sensed there was something else that she wasnt saying. One of those female subtexts that he was supposed to pick up on, a message he should understand without being told. What could it be?
Liz glanced at him, and looked away. And he felt as though hed just failed an important test.
8
Waiting in the lobby of West Midlands Police headquarters in Colmore Circus, Fry picked up a newspaper off the table. The Birmingham Mail. She hadnt seen the paper for years, in fact never read a local newspaper at all now.
She found herself drawn to the personal ads. To her mind, they seemed to give a more honest glimpse into peoples real lives than any of the journalists stories elsewhere in the paper. As she read the ads, with their sometimes cryptic wording, she recalled an Agatha Christie play that had once been staged by the local amateur dramatic society in Dudley. A Murder is Announced. Why had she been there? Shed been dragged along against her will, she imagined. Maybe some friend or relative had been in the cast. All she remembered was the bit about a silly advert in the personal column, giving the time and date and place of a murder. Then there was some business with the lights going out and shots being fired, and a body on the floor.
She stared out of the plate glass on to Colmore Circus, a stream of traffic going past into the city. This wasnt Little Paddocks in Chipping Cleghorn, and she couldnt expect to see Colonel Archie or Miss Letitia walking in through the French windows. There was no vicarage here that hadnt been turned into student bedsits. And no village shop in the shadow of the mosque.
Rachel Murchison showed her to a room on one of the upper floors of Lloyd House, through an open-plan office full of ringing telephones.
I just wanted to touch base before the meeting, said Murchison, arranging a folder full of papers in front of her.
Yes, I understand.
Touching base. One of those phrases beloved by management types everywhere. Frys heart sank when she heard it.
Murchison was now in a navy blue suit offset with a white blouse, dark hair tied neatly back, businesslike and self-confident, but still with that guarded watchfulness. She was the specialist counsellor, there to judge her psychological state.
In any cold case rape enquiry, the police had to consult counsellors before they approached a victim, and develop a joint approach strategy. They needed to understand whether the victim had moved on and didnt want to testify.
On the day Blake and Murchison came to Derbyshire, their approach strategy would already have been developed. They had planned their tactics before Fry even heard about the hit on the DNA database.
Im just here to help. Theres no pressure. Its all about support.
Support. It was such an over-used word. Fry had already heard it too often. There, in that overheated room, looking out over the back of the Edendale football ground, it had the dead sound of a curse.
Its understandable that you feel a need to be in control. Perfectly normal, in the circumstances.
Rachel Murchison would be from a sexual assault referral centre. Fry knew the police would have examined the stored exhibits from her assault for blood, saliva or semen traces, with the help of the Forensic Science Service. They might have found the tiniest speck of sperm on a tape lift from her clothing. Without statements from independent eyewitnesses, the police were reliant on forensic science.
But here, there was a witness, wasnt there? Someone had come forward after all this time. She wondered if she would get to find out who this person was.
I understand from our phone conversation that you were visiting family in Perry Barr, said Murchison. Your foster parents? You keep in touch then? Thats good.
Fry didnt tell Murchison that shed been guilty of failing to keep in touch as well as she ought to have done. Christmas cards, the occasional phone call. Jim and Alice Bowskill would have been justified in reproaching her, but that wasnt their way.
Instead, she gave an answer that she felt sure would tick the right box.
Theyre very supportive.
Excellent.
Murchison looked down at her folder. Fry was trying to avoid letting her eyes stray that way, afraid of seeing her own name leap out at her, preserved as a subject for psychological study.
And theres a sister, I believe?
Indeed there was. Angie Fry was her older sister. Theyd been apart for fifteen years, but were finally reunited. If united was the right word.
As Im sure you know, we were both taken into care as children, said Fry. I was nine, and Angie was eleven.
For your own protection?
Social Services said my parents had been abusing my sister. They said it was both of them.
So your childhood was spent in foster homes?
Yes.
At first, theyd kept moving on to different places. So many different places that Fry couldnt remember them. It was a few years before she realized that they didnt stay anywhere long because of her sister. Angie was big trouble wherever they went. Even the most well-intentioned foster families couldnt cope with her. But Diane had worshipped her, and refused to be split up from her.