Diane?
Yes. Okay. Im trying to remember.
You werent examining the scene. You were looking towards the corner of the street.
Yes. I think
And then the memory came to her. From among the ghosts of factory workers and custard makers, darker figures stepped from shadow to shadow, walking into the present. Or almost the present.
Yes, I think she said. I think at least one of them came out of the pub.
Thats great, Diane. See, it works.
Sandhu had taken a call on his mobile. He gestured to Blake, and they went into an anxious huddle.
Damn it, said Blake. Oh, God damn it.
Whats the matter? asked Fry.
I dont believe it.
Gareth?
Blake looked at her, then away. He kicked at a stone in frustration.
Bad news. Really bad news. We just lost our key witness.
9
There was one more important person who Fry hadnt met up with yet. She was about to put that right, but with mixed feelings. Shed spent all afternoon answering questions from Gareth Blake and Rachel Murchison, hour after hour with people watching her for a reaction every time she turned round. She had never imagined how exhausting it would be, what relief shed feel when she was finally allowed to escape. And this was the only first stage of the whole ordeal. She knew there was first worse yet to come.
Not brought your farm boy with you, then? Nice Constable Cooper?
Angie Fry sat across a table in a bar on Broad Street, close to Dianes hotel. It had to be a bar, because Angie hadnt offered to show her where she lived. And Diane hardly dared to ask. She was convinced that her older sister lived with a man, a totally unsuitable man who Angie knew she would disapprove of.
Diane frowned across the table. She had a glass of spritzer in front of her, while Angie was drinking something out of a bottle that she couldnt remember the name for.
Hes not my farm boy. Not my Constable Cooper.
Oh? I thought he was part of your team. Angie held up a hand with the first two fingers entwined. Like that, you and him, arent you?
This is nothing to do with him, or anyone else back in Derbyshire, said Diane. This is just me, and its personal.
Angie had the grace to look faintly embarrassed.
Okay, Sis. Im sorry. I was just trying to keep it light, you know.
It was obvious that Angie had cleaned up her act since Diane first made contact with her again. She seemed to have more than one set of clothes, at least, and her hair was tidier. Diane no longer felt quite so embarrassed to be seen with her in a respectable bar. Whether Angie was clean in every sense, Diane still wasnt sure. But then, it was a question she couldnt ask either.
Even now, she sensed a lot of unfinished business with Angie. There were so many things they hadnt talked about. A gulf still existed between them, a chasm so wide that it could never be bridged now. The relationship theyd had when they were teenagers back in Warley well, that was long buried in the past. It was the only thing they had in common, and it was the one subject they would never talk about.
Besides, Ben Cooper is Acting Detective Sergeant now.
Angie paused with a bottle halfway to her mouth. What? He got your job?
Temporarily.
Mmm.
Diane began to get irritated. Shed told herself she wouldnt, but her sister had an uncanny knack of getting under her skin.
Oh, dont worry, she said. Things will be right back to normal the minute I get away from here.
If you get away.
Well, Im certainly not staying in Birmingham for the rest of my natural life.
Why not?
Because youre here for a start.
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. But her sister looked smug, as if shed scored some kind of success.
Cheers, said Angie, raising her bottle in a toast. Heres to sisterly love.
Her sisters attitude made Diane reluctant to think about all the things shed planned to say. All those questions shed wanted to ask. Were going to be all right, you and me? The moment didnt seem right. Perhaps the time would never be right.
Shed told Rachel Murchison only half the story of their lives. It was true that theyd both been taken into care when Diane was nine and Angie was eleven. And there had been a whole series of foster homes before they landed with the Bowskills. Angie had been trouble wherever she went, though Diane had idolized her in that blind fashion younger siblings sometimes did.
It all went off the rails when Angie began using heroin and left home, not to be seen again by her sister for fifteen years.
Diane was conscious that she and her sister were hardly unique cases. There were sixty thousand children in foster care or local authority homes. Half of those sixty thousand wouldnt get a single GCSE, and would leave school with no qualifications, barely able to read or write, destined for deadend jobs, if not a permanent place on the dole queue. She was one of the measly two per cent who made it to university. Many were consigned to a life on the street, holed up in a filthy squat or crack house, pissing away their existence. Some care-home children felt unwanted and unvalued for the whole of their lives. Many never formed a normal relationship, because they didnt know how. Theyd never been shown.
It was hard for her to think of herself as part of a huge, anonymous mass. But thats exactly what shed once been just another statistic in a depressing flow of unwanted children, shuttling to and fro through the back alleys of society. Kids destined never to have a real family, or a real home.
At least for a while it had been Angie and Diane together. That had made fostering a bit more tolerable. But even that had come to an abrupt end.
Fry shut her eyes against the sudden stab of pain. It was a memory that tormented her, even now. That moment shed realized the unbelievable: Angie had left for good, walked out of their foster home in Warley and disappeared. Ever since then, Diane had thought that shed make things right by finding Angie. But perhaps the truth was that she had never forgiven her sister for that betrayal, and never could.
Lets have another drink, said Angie. Youre being slow, Sis.
Diane studied her sister. Yes, Angie herself had changed a lot in fifteen years, yet there was still the familiar rhythm in her speech, the faint buzz of a Black Country accent under the studied flatness. And Diane couldnt avoid noticing a characteristic gesture, a tense lifting of the shoulders that she knew very well because she was aware of doing it herself.
I dont suppose youve ever kept in contact with Mum and Dad? she said.
Angies mouth became a tight line.
You mean Jim and Alice Bowskill? No, why should I?
They were very good to us.
They were good to you.
What do you mean?
I was always the disappointment, didnt you notice? I couldnt do anything right in their eyes. You were the one they loved.
Angie, you were a nightmare. You made their lives a misery. Just like you did with all our previous foster parents. That was why we moved on so often.
Is it? Lucky for you that I left when I did, then. I bet Jim and Alice put everything into you then, didnt they? Of course. They got you through your A-levels, and into university. That must have been the high point of their lives. Little Diane, their great success story.
I worked hard for anything I achieved.
Right. I bet you were really studious.
I was. Angie, I gave you all fifteen years of it. I told you what I did at school, how I managed to scrape through to do my degree. I wanted to get an education. I needed it. And I told you about our parents coming to the graduation ceremony.
Our foster parents.
And how they got lost in Birmingham, so they arrived late.
And you didnt think anyone was coming, I know. I liked the bit about you getting drunk at a student party and being sick into somebodys window box. I cant imagine you doing that, Sis. You were always so prim and proper. A right stuck-up little prig.
Diane was beginning to get upset. This wasnt the way shed pictured it going. The hostility from her sister was growing with every mouthful of alcohol. She wondered if Angie had been drinking before she came, or whether she was high on something else.
Do you regret making contact with me again? she asked.
If you remember, I didnt have much choice, said Angie.
Thanks to your Constable Cooper.
With an effort, Diane controlled herself. She found she was gritting her teeth so hard that it hurt.
Thanks to your Constable Cooper.
With an effort, Diane controlled herself. She found she was gritting her teeth so hard that it hurt.
You do know what Im doing here, dont you? she said.
Angie took a swig of her drink. Oh, yes. I know. Its all about you again, isnt it?
They went out into Broad Street to look for somewhere to eat. For Diane, it was a relief to get out on to the busy pavement. Angie was getting a little too loud for comfort.
Hey, have you noticed how Broad Street seems to have become the place for a chavs night out? she said.
Diane wouldnt have put it quite like that herself. But, yes she had noticed.
I remember Broad Street mostly for the theatres, she said. It used to be where you came for a bit of culture.
Nothing cultural about this lot, said Angie. If you dropped a small nuclear device on a Saturday night and took out four or five of these clubs, youd exterminate the entire chav population from Longbridge to Erdington.
Young men were hanging out of car windows as they crawled up the road, a youth in white trainers carrying a bottle of Magners cider was throwing up in the gutter. Further up the street, a group were arguing with bouncers in front of a club, others were shouting abuse at police officers in a riot van. An Asian taxi driver wound up his windows to shut out the racial insults.
Birmingham hadnt seen much excitement since the Eurovision Song Contest and the G8 Summit had come to town in the same week. Back in May 1998, that was. No sooner had Terry Wogan and Ulrika Jonsson left the National Indoor Arena with an army of cheesy pop acts, than Tony Blair was arriving to rub shoulders with Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin next door at the ICC.
The International Convention Centre was in use now. That meant convention fodder, hundreds of black-suited sales people filling up the bars and restaurants on Broad Street.