Or a defendant whos not very convincing on the stand.
Blake smiled. Ah, yes. There are some people who just look so guilty that jurors will convict them whatever the evidence. But thats the chance you take in a jury system, isnt it?
He was repeating himself from that meeting in Superintendent Branaghs office. But something about their relationship had changed since then, a shifting of the dynamics had taken place, and Fry was the one at a disadvantage. She could even remember the moment it had happened.
You know, I dont like to hear you call me sir, Diane. It was always Gareth, wasnt it?
That had been a clear signal that their relationship wasnt going to be a professional one. They werent to be considered a DS and a DI working together, no longer colleagues who could safely share information fully with each other. From that moment, from the second she called him Gareth, she wouldnt be a fellow police officer any more. He was the investigator. And she was the victim.
But the six per cent figure is based on reported rapes, he said.
Most of them never get to court. Theres a high attrition rate, as you know.
Attrition rate?
Yes. Blake looked embarrassed, then faintly irritated. Diane, you know the jargon. Dont try to make me feel as if Im personally responsible for it.
Gareth Blake might have been uncomfortable. And she had to confess to herself that she hadnt made it any easier for him, hadnt wanted to either. Shed taken a small satisfaction in seeing him squirm, in watching that smooth demeanour crumble for a moment. It was petty, she supposed. But gratifying, all the same. Each time, it had given her a little bit of illicit pleasure.
Yes, Blake might have felt uncomfortable. But he couldnt know what it felt like to be on the other side of the table, to be a woman hearing a man lecturing her about attrition rates in rape cases. No amount of specialist training would give Gareth Blake that insight. He didnt have the right kind of eyes to see it. He didnt have the right kind of mind.
Blake shuffled his papers and closed his file.
Right. Well move on to the next stage. This afternoon, Diane, wed like to take you back to the scene of the incident. If that wouldnt be too difficult for you. But we would understand, if
No. No, that will be fine.
Fry had thought a lot about this moment, the time when she would have to see the place again. Memories were one thing. They didnt have any concrete substance, and you could bury them, if you tried hard enough. But a place was real. You couldnt deny the existence of a street, the wall of a factory, the hard concrete of a pavement. You couldnt bury them in that dark hole at the back of your mind. Reality was still there when you closed your eyes.
They went to the Digbeth area in Gareth Blakes car. He drove a Hyundai. Silver grey, she noticed. Just like almost every other car on the road, except hers. But his air conditioning worked well. On the journey across town, Fry tried to steady her breathing, to clear the buzzing in her head, the faint dizziness shed experienced when she walked out into the open air.
It was just the unaccustomed heat, she told herself. It felt so much warmer in the middle of a city than out in the wilds of Derbyshire. Concrete absorbed the heat, acres of plate glass reflected the sun on to already humid streets. And hardly a breath of wind reached this far into Birmingham. It was blocked by the miles of suburbs to the south.
She began to dream of standing on the Lickey Hills, way up on Beacon Hill. She could feel the wind up there, whipping through her hair, cooling the sweat on her brow. She could see that view of the city from a distance, its cluster of towers faintly blurred, as if standing in a mist. A first glimpse of the Emerald City. The far-off promised land.
Are you all right, Diane?
She jerked at the sound of Gareth Blakes voice. Shed almost forgotten where she was. But suddenly she was back in the here and now, sitting in the passenger seat of Blakes car, pulling up to the traffic lights in Deritend High Street. She saw a Peugeot dealer, the Old Crown, and the brick campanile of Father Lopes Chapel, which now seemed to be used as a car wash.
She jerked at the sound of Gareth Blakes voice. Shed almost forgotten where she was. But suddenly she was back in the here and now, sitting in the passenger seat of Blakes car, pulling up to the traffic lights in Deritend High Street. She saw a Peugeot dealer, the Old Crown, and the brick campanile of Father Lopes Chapel, which now seemed to be used as a car wash.
Yes, Im fine, she said.
I thought youd fallen asleep there for a minute.
Fry tried a smile for his benefit.
Wide awake, she said.
Were here, anyway.
Well, this part of Birmingham hadnt altered much. Ironic, when it was the one area that she would have been glad to see transformed. But these factory walls hadnt changed, or those side streets full of workshops and warehouses. The pub was still there, too. The Connemara. How had that particular pub survived, when so many others had closed?
The arches of the railway viaduct were certainly the same. Black brick, chipped and scrawled with graffiti. It stood exactly as it had been built centuries ago. Well, except for the graffiti, maybe. The messages were pretty modern.
And the scrubby expanse of waste ground that was still there, of course. Dense with clumps of weed, bounded by a barbed-wire fence. Even from here, she could see the gaps that had been prised in the fence. Someone still used this spot for their own purposes. Drug dealers, crack whores, sexual predators hidden in the shadows
Fry took a deep breath. She was in danger of losing objectivity, letting her emotions run away with her.
We have your statement, of course, said Blake. But sometimes more details will come back to you, once you have some distance from the incident. Distance in time, I mean.
Blake and Sandhu watched her carefully, noting every movement she made, everything she looked at or reacted to. Fry was trying to fill the scene with other people, apart from herself. She hadnt been alone then either. Far from it.
This witness you have, she said. Where did she come from?
She was on her way home, said Blake. She worked for a small publisher based in the Custard Factory.
The Custard Factory? Does it still exist?
Oh, yes.
Fry was surprised. By all the rules of logic, the Custard Factory was an idea that shouldnt have survived this long. The five-acre sprawl of industrial buildings had once been the territory of Sir Alfred Bird, the inventor of custard, who employed a thousand people there. Now, old factory buildings had been restored and converted into an arts and media quarter for Birminghams brightest young creative talents. A bohemian community of artists, with cafes and dance studios, art galleries and holistic therapy rooms. It should never have existed. Not in Digbeth.
She supposed the Connemara would at one time have been frequented entirely by factory workers men leaving their hot, exhausting jobs in the engineering works. Maybe employees from Mr Birds custard factory, too though she imagined most of those would have been women. Perhaps they would have been covered in a fine yellow powder, the way coal miners used to be distinguishable by the black layer of dust around their eyes.
You had left your partner in the car, said Blake. You were going to check the factory premises up the street here, to see if there was activity.
Yes, thats right.
Your partner was DC Andy Kewley.
Yes.
That night, she and Kewley had been in an Aston CID pool car, a Skoda Fabia. The blokes hated driving a Skoda. They always used to grumble about Traffic cops getting flashy BMWs to use as RPUs, the unmarked road policing units. Since they were unmarked, they said, why couldnt they be shared with CID? Some hopes.
They had been just one of several units drafted in from the divisions for a big operation headed up by the Major Investigation Unit. Kewley was driving, and she was observer. She had responded to a request over their radio from the officer in charge of the operation.
Fry remembered being passed by a slightly battered red Mercedes truck. M. Latif The peoples warehouse serving the Midlands since 1956. The Latif warehouse was in Digbeth somewhere. Bordesley Street, maybe.
And then the street had been empty. Or so it had seemed. She soon learned her mistake.
She had her personal radio in her hand when the attack came. But the first blow had numbed her arm, and she dropped the handset in the dirt without getting a chance to hit the red button that would have summoned assistance. She heard her radio crunch under someones foot. Hey, shes a copper.
As if the voice in her memory had just spoken to her again, Fry turned suddenly and looked around her. A piece of wasteland wedged between a railway viaduct and a factory yard. A battered fence protecting it with rusted barbs.
It was as if this piece of ground had been preserved just for her, to create a permanent reminder of a landmark in her life.
Blake and Sandhu stood back out of the way as she walked a few yards along the fence towards the parapet of a bridge and found a flight of steps. Below her ran the River Rea, Birminghams forgotten river, dirty brown and flowing under factories, invisible even from the bridges, overgrown with trees bursting from the walls of the factories. The Rea was hidden under the city, imprisoned in underground culverts to prevent flooding of the industrial buildings and working-class housing of Digbeth.
The sound of the water reminded her. She was standing in the exact spot now.
So this was it.
She saw five steps down to the water, a patch of weed-covered dirt. A sagging fence, a damp brick arch. And a series of jagged shadows on the corner of the street, moving ever closer.
But the day was bright, and the sun was overhead. Those shadows were in her memory.
And then she seemed to hear that voice in the darkness. A familiar voice, coarse and slurring in a Birmingham accent. Its a copper it said. Taunting laughter moving in the shadows. The same menace all around, whichever way she turned. A copper. Shes a copper